Bastille Day has come and with it, the explosion of writing and art that is the latest Cable Street Issue. I’ll be frank with you—every issue blows my mind. I see all the pieces one by one and they are surprising, delightful, shocking, thought provoking. But then they all come together, and each and every time, I’m moved by the web of art in conversation that is created.
Right from the top, take this issue’s “mascot,” Daisy the dog, along with the Tiger Swallowtail butterfly above. We hope these images bring you a moment’s smile in the face of all that is happeneing around the world in this moment. Similarly, we hope “Walking the Circle” in this issue will bring you a flash of inner youth, or that you may also burst into “Happy Days Are Here Again” when you read Ronna Dragon’s “Hollywood 101.”
Alternately, sometimes you can’t get away from the “suffocating layer of volcanic ash… settled over everything” as Jerome Brown puts it in his story “Demon” — or as Suchita Senthil Kumar describes:
It starts with a slow smoke.
They watch my feet unturn,
curl into itself before it bursts.
That’s when you need the style, panache, and delight of our two portfolios: The arresting color and space in Agnes Sioda’s oils and the fun and beauty of Jerome Brown’s photos.
And these are only some of the many treasures of this issue. Storm into this tower at your own speed, making sure to check out the poetry of F.C. Malby and Roberta Schultz, our paen to the giant of literature Ngũgĩ wa Thiong-o, essays whose wondrousness comes through from their titles alone — “Love’s Unruly Ride,” “Art’s Avarice,” and “Fiction, History, and the Fantastic” — followed by an interview with Eliza Gagnon in our new Enfants Terribles section, more from Troublemaker, and of course all the Insights, Colophons, and Summer and Remarkable Reads you have come to know and love. There is plenty to enjoy on this Bastille Day weekend, and we hope you have the time and space to tear the place apart.
—Hardy Griffin for the editors
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