a m b e r n e l s o n

10 years ago I sat in a tiny two bedroom apartment in Northgate Seattle for which I paid $275 for one of the rooms and with my roommates and friends at the time conceived of starting an online journal. 10 years ago I couldn't have really imagined the 10 years that would come—the people I would have chance to meet and publish and grow fond of, and the people I would have chance to turn down. (I've had chance to turn down, for instance, no less than 3 1980s teen celebrities, for instance.) Sometimes it was exhausting or stressful or I just really didn't want to do it. Sometimes I didn't want to pour through 500 submissions because I really just wanted to watch Seinfeld in syndication or sleep or write my own poems.

But looking back, I couldn't be more grateful. Nothing in my life would be the same if it weren't for alice blue—for our readers, our writers, our family. Thank you to everyone who has ever supported this weirdo adventure. It's been a motherfucking honor.

Amber

Jupiter is a Garden of Storms
	Some things are planted or go to seed and some things grow uncontrolled like fire a burning wilderness In a year all worlds created are created anew and all worlds seek new ways to survive a new year's burning Planets are just like people trying to survive or like gods hurtling through space riding each turbulent gravity as they come As they come the storms are coming upon us the weather uprooting all that was built
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The Executioner We Can't Live Without
	The wind a scythe The executioner the mother The mother the wind the mother gives birth the world gives the wind and the blood blankets like grass in the prairie O Mother sing a new song about the blood in the grass because we are running out of breath we are running against the scythe like rabbits so many born so many slaughtered and mother's voice is the weapon is the scythe the mother's voice is the wind singing us to sleep our blood her blood running
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AMBER NELSON is the author of several chapbooks, most recently Dutch Baby Combo (Dancing Girl). Her full-length, In Anima: Urgency is available from Coconut Books. in issue one

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