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Quay Words
Jennifer Pattison Rumford, Editor Sometimes the landscapes of our minds call to us. We remember places we haven’t seen in years, and even places we’ve never been. I remember living in a mining camp called Lotus when I was a child. I remember the road to Lotus and the adventures our family had in Lotus. I remember Lotus. My older brothers, when I join the Lotus conversations, hasten to point out I wasn’t born until after we moved from Lotus. But no matter what my brothers say, I see the landscape of Lotus in my mind. In an odd coincidence, two of our nonfiction pieces for this issue are set in places I used to live. I went to secondary school in Las Vegas, Nevada, and I attended college in Moscow, Idaho. Two of my children were born in the Pullman Hospital (read the article and you will understand how Pullman, Washington, figures into a story about Moscow, Idaho). Anesa Miller, the author of "Thoughts on the Prospect of Moving to Moscow," has since moved to the Palouse region. When I read her piece, I couldn’t help but wonder if she knew before she moved that there are people who consider Moscow on the same level as Taos and the Bermuda Triangle, one of the magical spots of the world. She is not the first person to find a "power spot" there. It is, after all, the home address of the first ever mail-order religion, Psychiana, and it’s also the place where you can find the giant Palouse earthworm, an albino worm that smells like lilies and can grow up to three feet long. A three-foot worm is a worm that has found it’s power spot. In any story, Las Vegas is always a character in its own right. It is my opinion that if you want to know what Las Vegas is really like, you have to sit down in a dark bar that smells of cocktails spilled between 2 and 3 a.m. There won’t be much light, maybe a light behind the bar, and the light of the slot machines beside the door and the juke box in the corner. The drink in front of you won’t have umbrellas, fruit, or swizzle sticks; it may not have ice. The bartender who made it—may know your name, but definitely knows your troubles; the cocktail waitress who served it—has the great legs of a dancer, because she was a dancer before she got too old or too many varicose veins. Put your coins in the juke box and let Shawn Colvin’s voice slide over you as she sings "Viva Las Vegas." In her voice, which is as clean as the sound of a star falling in a dark desert sky, the song becomes as sinful as the city. That was what they called it in those days before family resorts, Hilton hotels, or the Wynn empire that rose and fell and seems to be on the rise again. They called it Sin City. When I was a kid, we called it home. Thinking of Las Vegas, I think of my mother, not my father. She wasn’t in Las Vegas when she died, but I picture her in Las Vegas, picture the high heels spangled with rhinestones she wore when my parents went out to a show. I can see her sitting on the couch, the smell of cigarette smoke on her clothes. Was it smoking that gave her lung cancer, or living in Las Vegas in the days of above-ground testing, or something else entirely? Like a friend of mine said to me on the death of my mother, the good news is that you only have to bury your mother (or father) once.
Looking to the future of Quay, the next issue is open for submissions September 1–October 31. It will be our first single-genre issue, and we hope to do a single-genre issue each year. The first will be fiction only.
I’d like to announce to our readers the retirement of Matthew Quick. Matt was one of our founding members, who decided to take the chance and plunge into the unknown landscape of a start-up literary journal. Matt’s book, The Silver Linings Playbook, will be out next year, and he’s looking ahead at life as an author, not an editor. Happily, we have added Jean Ann Wertz and Kelly Varner to our staff to take over the reins of fiction. I’ll miss Matt, but it’s great to think of him traveling his own path in the best new landscape.
Finally, I hope you enjoy the issue as much as everyone at Quay enjoyed putting it together. Despite what you may think, this issue isn’t just a travelogue of my personal history. I hope it is a guidebook through the roadless territory ahead, the personal landscapes through which we all travel.
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