Issue 49 Foreword
Alanna Weissman
Animalia
Health and illness may be the most universal experiences we have as humans, as we know so well at Bellevue Literary Review. But this extends beyond homo sapiens into every corner of the animal kingdom; all species, from blue whales to the smallest insects, inhabit fallible bodies. While there are countless differences among the millions of members of taxonomic kingdom Animalia, navigating the boundary between health and illness is a rite of passage we all share. It is this uncanny sameness, and yet manifest difference, that we seek to illuminate with our Animalia theme issue.
Anyone who’s had their life changed by an animal knows how profound such a connection can be. But while our creature compatriots can’t write about it, we—fortuitously—can. In the essay “Exene,” Kate Broad describes how a cat rescued by her estranged brother becomes her last link to him after he takes his own life: “He took her in and cared for her and loved her, and still he let her go. He made us let him go, too.” In “Sentries,” Emilie Pascale Beck navigates her own medical challenges while grappling with her dog’s age-related decline: “He is long and low and old, nearly blind, one misstep away from a broken back. My own back catches when I pick him up; I’ve been told that I shouldn’t lift anything heavy, that it compresses my already compressed vertebrae. But I do it anyway.” And while many MDs have graced our pages over the years, Margaret Brosnahan is perhaps the first veterinarian to appear in BLR. In her essay “Cheyanne,” she confronts an encounter from vet school that still haunts her, decades later.
The fiction in this issue of BLR is no less compelling. Reality and fantasy collide in Martin Piñol’s striking, surrealist “Caw, Sasazuka,” as the narrator’s brother falls ill: “Brother coughs more crow-coughs and I worry he may soon turn into a bird.” In “Finding Honey,” by Daniel Reiss, a man recently released from incarceration returns to his hometown in East Tennessee and finds his relationships—human and animal alike—permanently altered. And in Mark Gallini’s concise, powerful “Raptors,” an owl demonstration at a bird sanctuary becomes a lens into a deteriorating marriage.
The many contradictions inherent to living with and loving animals—and what that says about us as humans—come alive in this issue’s poetry. Caroline Barnes’ searing “Coaster” and Nancy Kay Peterson’s devastating “Chance in Ukraine” stop us in our tracks. In “City Creatures,” Rachel Dillon forces us to consider the urban wildlife—often unseen or roundly despised—who suffer for our lifestyles: “They make it look easy, dying / without a fuss: deflated bunny / under the bush …. Rats flattened red on concrete. / Pigeon bones webbed in drying mire.” And in “Crab Eating,” Cat Wei turns the simple act of eating seafood into a carnal yet spiritual experience: “When I’m crab eating / I am not trying / to be anyone, / hand to mouth, / hand to claw, / lost in the animal before me.”
The BLR editorial team was saddened to learn of the passing of Jayne Marek, a poet whose work appeared several years ago in Issue 37. Jayne’s writing is particularly influenced and enriched by her close observations of animals and plants. Three weeks before her death, she submitted a set of poems for BLR’s Animalia theme. We were so moved by them and are honored to include two in this issue, including “Animals Decide When to Die,” a gently haunting elegy: “Old cat, my little love, as you withdraw / along with the declining days in October / and fold yourself into slanting light, / you seem quiet and neat as rolled-up socks.” The poem ends with a poignant line illuminating the shared arc of life for both people and animals: “Only a body can convey / how shadows rise inside, a tide of aches / overfilling aches until the shoreline lets go.”
We humans live our lives in parallel with the animals around us. As you’ll read in this issue, animals sustain us in more ways than one: pets become cherished companions; farm animals give us meat and milk; lab mice serve as the test subjects for lifesaving scientific advances. Amid our varied relationships with the furred, feathered, and finned, humans tend to focus on what sets us apart, despite the incontrovertible truth that we are ultimately animals ourselves. And so, lest we forget that fact, we hope you come away from this issue musing on a new or deeper understanding of the way all life is intertwined despite the vastness of our shared kingdom. As Don Zancanella writes in his story “The Beautiful Ones,” “to use the word ‘only’ before the name of a living creature [is] to make a moral error of an especially grievous kind.”
Alanna Weissman
Assistant Nonfiction Editor