Editors' Notes for Issue 1.4

This week, a Ukrainian baker made his bride a wedding dress out of 1,500 cream puffs. I keep returning to the image of this dress in my mind, and more specifically, the decidedly uncomfortable half-grimace of the bride as she is twirled in a stiff gown of confectioner's sugar and caramel before the wedding attendees and media.

I wonder if this is the love she hoped for, if the baker's all-consuming passion resulted in a genuine effort to marry the two things he loved most in the world—this woman, and the undeniable delight of sugar on the tongue. Or was she simply a beautiful vehicle for his career, a sticky Pygmalion in stale pastries?

As we compiled this latest issue of Blood Orange Review we noticed an underlying theme of food and more so, the food that occasionally highlights our various experiences of love. For instance, in Joel Davis' story, "Six Eggs and Grace," the eggs become a symbol of life’s monumental flubs. The potato family boiling in a pot in Dennis Mahoney’s “The Ghost in the Glass” foreshadows the family catastrophe about to take place. Tim Green's poem "High on Hog" is a humorous look at the ways we clog our arteries with cholesterol and then all the ways we try to avoid "...our clattering hearts--like metal trays / clanging in the kitchen of the chest...."

Unlike much of the sensuous food-related writing out there, these pieces hint at something less than palatable. These pieces are about more than just food; they are about all the ways of absorbing the world with the body--resulting in, yes, heartache( and heartburn) but much more as well. To read our fourth issue click here.