Hello Fellow Sappy Evergreens,
Welcome back to our snow-buried dam. We hope you’re having a delicious start to 2024. But if you’re a furry little damsel in distress, have no fear, we will rescue you from your icy tower of existential dread, imposter syndrome, nasty bills and taxes and job applications, the chokehold of seasonal depression, etc. with this mind-melting issue.
We’re bad climbers, despite our serving-cunt claws and thick propeller tails, so we aren’t your saviors. But I bet you didn’t know that beneath all this voluptuous insulative flesh and fur, we’re best friends with the birds.
We let out a guttural Snow White moan of a submission call manically on twitter, and they come swooping in to our aid. Our ponds invite droves of insects to the water and surrounding soil, ringing the dinner bell for our bird bffs’ all-you-can-eat-buffet. So they let us ride bareback up to your towers to plop you back into paradise: nostalgia or reality.
In this shitty metaphor (I build dams not metaphors) (I write sins not tragedies) (shout out Panic!), the birds are our lovely genius contributors, flying into your bedrooms like a bat out of hell or the dmv, latching their talons of poeticizing into your scratchy wool sweaters, and teleporting you to idyllic islands of better-understanding what’s beneath your resting bitch face, your angsty doom n gloom playlist, your restless fingers tapping every surface waiting for something gorgeously unknown and new. Because let’s face it, we often conceal ourselves in shiny gift-wraps and tight glittery bows, to show we’re devoutly present, when we’re trying to wade or float or keep our heads above water in the rapids of the past or the unprecedented future.
Much like rivers, our aquifers of emotions impacting our flow states, capacities, and growth are unseen, cradled deep beneath the rock, dirt, and clay of everyday functioning, routines, and responsibilities. This issue unearths the groundwater tables of our contributors, illuminating the underground streams of consciousness and dreams embedded in the compacted sediment of us all.
We hope you have a lifejacket or a limo-kayak to travel through the roaring torrents of this issue. If you don’t, feel free to grab onto our beaver backs or strong bird friends, we’ll always swim with you.
We exude infinite gratitude for everyone that keeps showing support for our dam magazine. May we all continue to connect the world’s waterways of expression for all eternity, and keep our literary community pond lush and teeming with wild gorgeous life and love.
All our beaver heartbeats and hugs,
Silas, Ellery, and Haley
Beaver Magazine 