You know that feeling when you're walking down the street in the summer heat, dust kicking up in puffs around you, that feeling that your insides might liquefy and then catch on fire like gasoline? This was the feeling I was craving when I came up with the idea of dedicating a whole issue to fire. After a long, terrifically cold winter, I wanted to, strangely, jump right into the middle of a gigantic ball of flames. So what if it consumed me? Wouldn't it be glorious for just one moment?

What I love about young artists is that they're unafraid to try anything and live with the idea that this one present moment is all that matters. This is something we lose a little bit more every year as we get older (or at least I do): that ability to leap fearlessly into an unknown experience, and to love the discovery of right now, right here. An ability not unlike the nature of fire itself--transitory, ever-changing, all-consuming.

Many of the artists in this issue of Wet Ink really understand fire as both a living, crackling entity and as a metaphor for something else--love, fear, even death. Kimberley Hartwig's poem, "Incandescent," merges these two ideas together. We see fire as it is, but also what it represents. Take a look at Dominic Travis Haye's "Burn Baby Burn," for an altogether disorienting journey into how fire and violence can come together to make a thriller of a poem.

Jump into the flame and enjoy the burning.

Jen Sookfong Lee, Editor