It is hot.  There are ninety days in Summer.  As of this writing, we are forty-five days in.  Smack Dab In The Middle.  It is hot.  This planet.  This nation.  The public streets and parks and pools.  The rhetoric and the mouths that express them and the arms that exclaim them.  It is hot.

But there was a Coke commercial about teaching the world to sing and filling it with harmony.  There was a Nestea Ice-Tea commercial about letting yourself fall into a cold pool, fully clothed, and losing yourself in the splash.  There is air-conditioning.

An antidote to all the heat is escape.  And that is where Art plays an important role.  The Thieving Magpie has arrived just in time, flapping its big wings to help provide some cool air and escape from all that heat.

Welcome to Issue 6.  In this issue, we have poets and writers from everywhere on this hot planet; from Ankara, Turkey and La Vista, Nebraska to Long Beach, California and Los Angeles via Argentina.  We have poems and stories ranging from scenes of daily life to those of exotic heartbreak.

Please click on to any of the links, from The Current Parliament to the Archives to the Files of Burning Dad and our Photography galleries with one goal in mind:  Cool off, escape and please remember your humanity.  Then spread it.

EDITOR’S NOTE:  This issue’s Files of Burning Dad essays makes a passing reference to the lyrics of a popular song by The Steve Miller Band which includes a fictionalized incident of a man being gunned down in El Paso, TX.  The Burning Dad piece was written before the tragedies that occurred in El Paso, TX while Issue 6 was being put together and is not meant in any way to make light of, or glorify, the continuing traumas of prejudice, hate crimes, mass shootings and gun violence that are ongoing in this country.

We pray for the victims.  We keep hope that an answer is on the horizon.  We should all act to make that happen.