Word from the Editor
If you are an artist of any kind, chances are you are no stranger to The Unknown. In fact, it has probably been a motivating factor in creating your art. I know it has been for me. Wrestling with The Unknown is a fundamental part of the human experience, and the human experience is a fundamental part of art.
When this issue started to come together, we realized how much of the content we were accepting and producing had to do with The Unknown—with loss, with grief. There was no intention of having a theme for this issue, but one slowly started to emerge regardless. It’s almost as if the world is desperate for direction, healing, and change. Art gives us that. We go to art when we are lost, when we need to find the right words to say. We create art when we need to heal. And we collaborate with art, with artists, to seek change.
So often, it’s easy to think of The Unknown as something that is scary, or to be fearful of. But so much of The Unknown can be filled with joy, excitement, fun, wonder, love. While much of the work in this issue is heavy with emotion, fear, tragedy, and mourning, I kept thinking about love whilst reading and selecting pieces. Love can be seen as one of the biggest unknowns we may face, yet I could see so vibrantly how aching our world, our society is for love. True love. Not the kind we toss around casually. Not what we consider a sentimental feeling. Not what we see in the movies. But the action of love. How do we heal without love? Without action?
bell hooks speaks so deeply and honestly about love in All About Love: New Visions (William Morrow, 2001). She makes many points about how fearful we are of love, or expressing our love. But so much of our life, who we are, how we learn, heal, process, is centered around love. She quotes M. Scott Peck’s book The Road Less Traveled, in which he defines love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” Peck also explains that love is an act of will, an intention and an action. bell hooks even says “there can be no love without justice.”
Without action, there is no love; without love, there is no justice.
If you read Lunch Ticket’s mission statement, it will become very clear that our mission is to seek justice. To strive for a more just world. We do this by uplifting voices of those who also seek justice through their art. We have carefully curated a wide variety of voices that need to be heard, that demand more, that push us all to heal rather than harm, to lean into The Unknown, make a home in it. Perhaps, making a home in The Unknown is where we find the will to extend ourselves, to nurture each other’s growth. Despite the loss, the pain, the fear, the destruction we have all faced, we know we are all better people, we are all capable of seeking more justice, with the action of love healing us and guiding us. My sincere hope is that the art, the words, in this issue remind you of that.
“Without love there is no justice.”
Michaela Emerson is a poet from Fort Worth, Texas. Her work is often inspired by pop culture, shame, religion, and the many nuances of life. Several of her poems have appeared in Polemical Magazine, Verses, and Jawbreaker Zine. She is getting her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles and she is the Editor-in-Chief for the magazine Lunch Ticket. She currently resides in Texas with her cat Dexter and a multitude of books she has yet to read.
