Faerie. An umbrella term that is composed of so many different creatures, you may even be surprised at what it might represent. Faeries themselves, of course, but also: Elves, Goblins, Leprechauns, Trolls, Imps, Nymphs, Giants, the Green Man and Woman, Pixies, Mermaids or Sirens, Selkies, Woodwose, hell—even Nightmares (they’re not just bad dreams, you know)! This is by no means an exhaustive list, as entire dictionaries have been written on the subject (hat tip to Katherine Briggs). 

In my study of the folklore and living belief centered around Faeries, which some, whose breath still befouls the wind, have called upon them as Good Folk, as Sidhe, Shining Folk,
the Good Neighbors, Pixies,
Themselves, the Merry Gentry,
Aos Sidhe, Seelie, Unseelie,
the Unseen—

And that is only in one torn and weathered section of the known map. Their names are as varied as there are people the world over, and across time itself. All of one thing remains clear, yet befogged by mist as any certain thing can ever be; intersecting in the dark at every witch’s crossroad, every path that diverges on a fork’d devil’s tongue: as far as anything can be known of Themselves: their entire world exists on the threshold; between sleep and wake, dusk and dawn, ‘fore and thereafter, light and dark, creation and destruction, between what is certain and certainty’s unbecoming, between the truth and the trick, between the living and the dead; whom we are, whom we could have been, and whom we will never yet be again. 

When I think of the keepers of thresholds and whom it is that exists in that space between doorways, I always think of the Poet. It is, to my mind, perhaps the closest thing you can ever be to a Faerie, whilst still anchored to the earth in this absurd human world. A Poet. Does that sound strange? Well, then, let it resound strangely. Consider the creations born of such poets: lawless, unpredictable, expansive. There is no other place to find a poet, as well, as upon the threshold, balancing the sacred and the iconoclastic; examining the roots, the matter, and keeping the world turning on the head of a hat pin; calling each and every thing by both its proper and secret names.

And so, I have endeavored, as the bedeviled curator of this issue, to weave upon us a faerie thorn, twisted and bent by neither storm nor time, but leaning instead on the heaviness of its boughs—each with a single, swollen fruit—a poetic tale—fattened under the weight of its own offering, and polished so precisely as to convey a mirror to every reader that considers the flesh, dares to taste—finding a reflection of the feathered, forgotten thing that still sings in the basement of every heart; calling them away under strange bewilderment, to pull them under, as into the land of Faerie; into the dark world of their own, perpetual dreams. 
That is Poetry. That is Faerie.

We all seek to escape, admit it or not. These poems are dreams of escape, too real—too real. They extend to each a taste of the Otherworld.
And is it no wonder that such dreams have gathered here now, in this time?
Dare you dream such dreams with me? Dare you consider escape? Consider carefully, my friend, for the time to go is near. And you may never return—
precisely—
to where you are.