Dear Readers and Writers,

I’ve been thinking recently about the word belong and how traditionally it carries no direct object. Belonging is not enacted upon a recipient, and its intransitive nature renders the subject passive. I belong. You belong. An adjective disguised as a verb: a descriptor dependent on amorphous variables like identity, relationships, community, or a greater sociopolitical context.

In one reading, Issue Four questions such dependency, conducting an inquiry of belonging and control. Not control in the authoritarian sense, but control as in navigation, composition, or balance.

To what degree(s) is it possible to control belonging? When might control be desirable? How might we practice control? Then, what does it mean to imagine belong as transitive? What if we become active conductors of belonging? To belong oneself. To belong another. Where? When? And how deeply?

I am grateful to the poets of Issue Four because they speak me into a space of these questions, and I am grateful to all who join me in appreciating their work.

Benjamin Faro
Editor