Back in November, I came across an article about the Blue Mesa Reservoir in Colorado drying out and revealing the abandoned town of Iola, Colorado. I was intrigued with Iola, a small town overtaken by water when the Blue Mesa Dam and Reservoir were first built in the 1960s. The foundations of buildings, long lost streets, and other abandoned artifacts can now be found. It reminds me how our myths unfold and how our stories remain close to nature. The resurfacing of Iola also points to the truly sobering part of the story: the Blue Mesa Reservoir’s capacity is only at 39%, one example of many places where the Western United States is running out of water. Animal, insect, and plant populations are dwindling and losing their ecosystems. Many of our contributors address these growing concerns. This includes John Gifford’s flash fiction capturing rampant forest fires and the legacy of the American bison, Willy Palomo’s poem teaching us to nourish ourselves by eating flor de izote, and Anna Roda reminds us that the US-Mexico border is both a monster and an imaginary line.
We ultimately gravitated toward "Flora, Fauna, & Lore" in order to preserve the animals and plants that are critical to our environment and in our memories. Many of the things we write about may soon be only folklore, and our words compel us to hold on. We were also inspired by Carol Wellart’s paintings. Her artwork is vibrant and prominently intersects wildlife with the literary. Just like the writing she accompanies in this issue, Wellart opens up worlds and all of their striking colors. Like archetypal forests, our landscape builds on the imagination with mystery, fear, discovery, and adventure in this issue. We encounter cryptids, biblical revisions, fortune tellers, trickster coyotes, and stories of the sea sweeping away our love.
This issue also marks our first annual Tarantula Poetry Prize. Congratulations to our winner, Jesica Carson Davis, for her poem, “Lament of the Preschool Teacher’s Wife,” which was selected by Gary Jackson. Jackson writes,
What I love about the poem is the immediacy of voice, and the established persona from the first line (also helped, of course, by the wonderful title). The tight control of lines such as “Our house is becoming a graveyard I keep” help balance the poem at the razor edge of sentimentality, enabling it to explore the nuances of loss from those who are both the grievers and the killers: all of us who “buy peace in different ways.” I’m also amazed at the efficacy at which the poem manages to clearly render all of these figures: the caterpillars-turned-butterflies, the children who kill by neglect, the preschool teacher who is absent from the poem (which is so fitting in a poem that tackles those “unwilling to take responsibility”), and the wife who bears witness to it all, yet also has agency. And I’m left with a perfect portrait of a speaker wrestling with a question for which there is no easy answer. My favorite type of poem.
Congrats also goes out to our finalists for their poems, which are also featured in this issue: Mark Chartier, Carolyn Cushing, Julie Hungiville LeMay, Rodney Gomez, and Jeff Pearson. Finally, thank you to everyone who entered. We read your work not only with admiration, but also with appreciation for your support of Pilgrimage.
Along with the 2018 Tarantula Poetry Prize, please enjoy our latest translation folio, curated by Katie Brown, and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube Channel, “Declamations,” another way that we feature our contributing writers and continue to build our community. •
Juan Morales
Pueblo, CO
January 25, 2019
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