In sharing the call for The Spring Crab—a special issue of Crab Creek Review devoted to flash
creative nonfiction—I said that I was looking for pieces that would break my heart in all the right
ways. Which is to say I sought transformation—in under 1000 words.
The issue’s theme is “Summer Flings,” and while flings can mean sex, love, and romance, my
hope was to discover transitory relationships of all kinds that in some way clung to summer. I
wanted to see how writers would reflect on brief yet powerful exchanges of energy—the kind
that change us forever.
Long or short, that is the power of relationships: we touch each other’s lives, often in small ways,
and leave profound yet invisible imprints that last a lifetime.
The Spring Crab opens with Jade Hidle’s letter to a grandfather she never met (Others tell me
that those traits are uniquely me, but it’s hard to believe I’m new, that I’m an only.) which speaks
to the power of ghost-relationships—particularly those with ancestors—while Tiffany Palumbo’s
essay takes us to the most transitory of haunted spaces: a hotel room. (Every day, a little bit of us
would be purged from the room, turning it into just another tacky roadside hotel with threadbare
carpet and a neon sign blaring to potential visitors: “VA ANCY.”)
Ashley Lewin’s summer lake adventures atop her father’s shoulders show us the tenuousness of
familial ties (Maybe he thought it was a great gag to shock families in other boats. Maybe it was
what he had to offer in place of love.), and Adam D. Weeks’ reflection on What We Lost, a poem
by Kimberly Grey, brings us into relationship with the slippage of mortal life (breathing and not
breathing—in other words, how we deal with it: we do, then don’t, then do again.)
Two micros by Jessica Gigot reflect on how difficult yet tempting it is to stay (sultry mirage of
July and John Prime songs, leopard lilies, penstemons, and pussy paws…Let me never forget
why I left.) while Lisa Hanson’s tender heartbreaker made me laugh before it made me cry
(…when I had my first pregnancy, the wily and skeptical teen I was didn’t have the word
normcore to express what I thought of the forced femininity and assumed hetero married family
dynamics.)
Jennifer McGaha’s cautionary tale takes us back in time and reminds us that the love we yearn
for may not be what we really want—though we want it nonetheless (I am filled with longing for
another time, for the me I once was or might have been, for the night I danced under the strobe
lights with a man I wanted to love.) Finally, Natalie-Pascale Boisseau’s tale of women gathered
in summer is dreamlike, lyric, and dangerous—a sticky rainbow of sherbet melting down your
sunburnt arm (It is warm with the love of my aunts, and with another feeling—new, hot—that
knots in my belly. I put the feelings and the love inside the pitcher with the tiny lost denture, the
mouth that cannot speak.)
After the acceptances were sent, I reread these pieces as a collection, searching for links beyond
the common theme. Energy clustered around family, parenthood, and physical intimacy
intertwined with loss, grief, death, broken promises, and yearning. Together they reminded me
that we begin relationships hoping for surprise and fulfillment, and while we may receive the
former, the latter is often elusive. What we hope to find in others is far more complex than
romance or orgasmic delights—it’s hope in the dark, forgiveness amidst betrayal, faith while
falling, and redemption in both the domestic and the holy.
It’s a conundrum: through relationships we seek to evolve while remaining who we are, our clay
feet mud-stuck in the earth. Sometimes we sink and stay where life lands us, sometimes we loose
ourselves and walk away, and sometimes we make peace with what will break when we fly—but
we never know until afterwards if we’ve made the right choice.
~ Gabriela Denise Frank, Creative Nonfiction Editor
creative nonfiction—I said that I was looking for pieces that would break my heart in all the right
ways. Which is to say I sought transformation—in under 1000 words.
The issue’s theme is “Summer Flings,” and while flings can mean sex, love, and romance, my
hope was to discover transitory relationships of all kinds that in some way clung to summer. I
wanted to see how writers would reflect on brief yet powerful exchanges of energy—the kind
that change us forever.
Long or short, that is the power of relationships: we touch each other’s lives, often in small ways,
and leave profound yet invisible imprints that last a lifetime.
The Spring Crab opens with Jade Hidle’s letter to a grandfather she never met (Others tell me
that those traits are uniquely me, but it’s hard to believe I’m new, that I’m an only.) which speaks
to the power of ghost-relationships—particularly those with ancestors—while Tiffany Palumbo’s
essay takes us to the most transitory of haunted spaces: a hotel room. (Every day, a little bit of us
would be purged from the room, turning it into just another tacky roadside hotel with threadbare
carpet and a neon sign blaring to potential visitors: “VA ANCY.”)
Ashley Lewin’s summer lake adventures atop her father’s shoulders show us the tenuousness of
familial ties (Maybe he thought it was a great gag to shock families in other boats. Maybe it was
what he had to offer in place of love.), and Adam D. Weeks’ reflection on What We Lost, a poem
by Kimberly Grey, brings us into relationship with the slippage of mortal life (breathing and not
breathing—in other words, how we deal with it: we do, then don’t, then do again.)
Two micros by Jessica Gigot reflect on how difficult yet tempting it is to stay (sultry mirage of
July and John Prime songs, leopard lilies, penstemons, and pussy paws…Let me never forget
why I left.) while Lisa Hanson’s tender heartbreaker made me laugh before it made me cry
(…when I had my first pregnancy, the wily and skeptical teen I was didn’t have the word
normcore to express what I thought of the forced femininity and assumed hetero married family
dynamics.)
Jennifer McGaha’s cautionary tale takes us back in time and reminds us that the love we yearn
for may not be what we really want—though we want it nonetheless (I am filled with longing for
another time, for the me I once was or might have been, for the night I danced under the strobe
lights with a man I wanted to love.) Finally, Natalie-Pascale Boisseau’s tale of women gathered
in summer is dreamlike, lyric, and dangerous—a sticky rainbow of sherbet melting down your
sunburnt arm (It is warm with the love of my aunts, and with another feeling—new, hot—that
knots in my belly. I put the feelings and the love inside the pitcher with the tiny lost denture, the
mouth that cannot speak.)
After the acceptances were sent, I reread these pieces as a collection, searching for links beyond
the common theme. Energy clustered around family, parenthood, and physical intimacy
intertwined with loss, grief, death, broken promises, and yearning. Together they reminded me
that we begin relationships hoping for surprise and fulfillment, and while we may receive the
former, the latter is often elusive. What we hope to find in others is far more complex than
romance or orgasmic delights—it’s hope in the dark, forgiveness amidst betrayal, faith while
falling, and redemption in both the domestic and the holy.
It’s a conundrum: through relationships we seek to evolve while remaining who we are, our clay
feet mud-stuck in the earth. Sometimes we sink and stay where life lands us, sometimes we loose
ourselves and walk away, and sometimes we make peace with what will break when we fly—but
we never know until afterwards if we’ve made the right choice.
~ Gabriela Denise Frank, Creative Nonfiction Editor