When we started Locust Review, we knew two things: 1. The world had become radically weird. 2. It was going to get even weirder.
We had no idea it was about to get this weird this quickly. Or this terrifying. Like most of you, we had heard rumblings of a strange virus, and our imaginations naturally went in the direction of “what if?” But it was still an “if.”
Now here we are. A global pandemic. We are stuck at home, that voice asking “what about the rent?” or “what happens if you lose your job?” or can’t get unemployment getting louder and louder. Or we are saddled with that ignominious label of “essential worker,” unprotected, likely underpaid, always exhausted, always at risk.
Through our computer screens or televisions, we watch as incompetent governments bungle their way through their response, either excusing thousands of deaths or outright shrieking at us to get back to work. Braying Typhoid Marys take to the streets, screaming that you should die for their haircuts and 31 flavors. Mass graves are the subtext of their every word. The capitalist press, meanwhile, largely ignores our rent strikes and the wildcats of essential workers.
It feels strange – for the uninitiated – for capitalism to become so naked, so unapologetic, so savage. We cannot afford to shut out this strangeness though. Our survival depends on it. More to the point, it’s only by running this gauntlet of the bizarre, the grotesque, the eldritch, that we can start to imagine something better. Something (dare we say it?) utopian.
Copies of our second issue are already in mailboxes (although we have heard word of delays in international mail). Much of the content will be posted here online in the coming weeks. Which means it is time for us – and you – to start thinking of issue three. Here’s the call. We want your fiction, art, your poetry, your essays or interviews, for consideration.
June 1st is our deadline. Submissions should be emailed to locust.review@gmail.com.
How weird do we want it? How weird can you make it? How much of the present moment can you mine for the dark and gothic? Can you help us salvage our working-class dreams from the debris wrought by this system? How much wreckage can you push aside to find the kernel of hope underneath? It’s not like there’s a shortage.
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Submit work to Locust Review by e-mailing us at locust.review@gmail.com.