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The concept of “collections” runs the gamut in our imaginations. It might conjure up spooky dolls, something Havisham-like and desperate, or what it’s like to be a child enthralled with certain trinkets. I myself, at age eight, collected Scratch-n-Sniff stickers which I lovingly placed in an old family photo album—relegating the actual photos to a shoebox. Then, of course, there are those collections and collectors that have names and terms assigned to them, tricky, hard to remember words that tend to crop up in crossword puzzles: philatelist (stamps) and numismatics (coins).
In this issue, Andrea Spofford, in “Elephants,” examines all the curious ways in which elephants are collected: from zoos to wonder cabinets—which are full of “curiosities and rarities.” Aaron M. Fortkamp creates a menagerie, albeit a written one, but also one that contains humorous detail in “The Spider Does Not Know Love.” Wondering if his mother’s “steaming repression had finally found its valve through collectibles,” Brently Johnson tells us about the “Raisin Invasion,” when the California Grapes slowly invaded his sister’s abandoned bedroom.
Obviously, the work we’ve compiled here is a collection itself—a collectible, if you will. We’ve selected work that can help us appreciate as many of the nuances such a theme can hold: from disquiet to anticipation. We hope you’ll find this issue as intriguing as we do.
Laura Powers, guest editor
Blood Orange Review
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