A magazine by and for rational optimists.
A magazine by and for rational optimists.
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The Dial
A magazine by and for rational optimists.
Summer 2022
Issue 4 - Trace
When it first entered the written lexicon some seven hundred years ago, the word “trace” meant “to follow,” “to outline,” or “to ponder." We chose it as our issue theme because it reproduces the Transcendentalists’ praxis of “rational optimism, as well as beckons us to engage the world around us through critical inquiry despite our present moment’s feverish pitch.
The True
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Poetry
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ISSUE 4
equinox in big sur
by Brynna Hall
i.
dawn under redwoods looks like
deep night;
any change of light is obscured by
one thousand years
of silent perseverance–
burn marks slashed across maroon trunks,
the patient stalwart grows ever upward
between pushing modernity
distant whispers of traffic
and the rushing pacific
a brother in solemn certainty.
dawn under redwoods,
when owls and jays,
once a day,
harmonize.
tucked in hooded shadows,
mournful baritones of the Great Horned God
sings itself into a sunrise slumber;
the last stret
The Human
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Poetry
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ISSUE 4
ODD RADIO CIRCLES (ORCS)
by Richard Jackson
Our hot air balloon / turned into a lead ball.—Marjana Savka, Ukrainian poet
They look like a virus you’d see under a microscope.
A city flattened by artillery.
A bubble with a galaxy inside it, an amorphous shroud.
Not unlike the bubbles a child blows waiting in line for bread.
Undulating as if in waves towards an absent shore.
Carrying the driftwood of space and time.
Only seeing what the radio telescope writes on film.
Like what is hidden in the pictures from Mariupol
Beyond me, wav
The Necessary
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Essay
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ISSUE 4
They Carry A Sickle and We Bow Down To Them
by Dana Kanafina
Iam a petite, baby-faced woman. Many people close to me still joke about it. It
is all too familiar—every time I get ID'd at a bar (or worse, at a grocery
store), my friends snicker. Every time my little sister’s classmates ask her
which grade I’m in, she talks about it for weeks. It is simply comical when I
get excited over SpongeBob Squarepants on TV. I always argue that I am content
with a portion of my childhood engraved in me because this isn’t just my
experience—we as a country live exact
The Good
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Photography
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ISSUE 4
UNTITLED 1-4
by Nimue Hastings
Artist’s Note
When I think of the theme “Trace,” I find my mind wanders out to the periphery
of things. We can think of the obvious trace we leave behind as our human legacy
— which we often deem of negative impact: trash and poison in many variations.
But I wonder in reverse how the smoke in the sky leaves a trace on our lungs,
our impact feeling far off but being quite direct. How a note in a fire pit
mocking someone’s lack of care traces us back to our own follies. But I also
like to con