Editors' Note--Only Slightly Alarming...

It’s that creepy time of year again, folks, and we at The Toucan are experts in creepy. But aside from that, it’s so nice to be writing these notes again. How was everyone’s summer…wait, summer, when was THAT? Yep, Happy Halloween. The vast majority of people (but not me) I know will be spending their Halloween getting drunk. So is The Toucan, as you can plainly see. And look! He invited some slugs and bats to share the booze. Apparently slugs really like beer…who knew?

Enough of this nonsense. Point is, we’re back with a rollicking good issue. We say that every time, ‘cause it’s true. We have a little more art, a photo accompanying one of Dan Cirilo’s poems, and of course, the aforementioned Toucan partying heartily away. The poems this time seem to have a theme, a bit, of time passing, of fun had, of mistakes made and learned from, of something greater than yourself. That wasn’t purposeful, we’re not trying to attack you with some big life lesson. If we were you’d know about it. We’re not very stealthy. What this has to do with Halloween, I don’t know. Maybe because every Halloween you are inexorably getting older. You started off in pint-size Winnie-The-Pooh costumes and are now sewing your own sheepskin or shoving a pillow down your shirt to look like Gertrude Stein.

About the only alarming thing in here other than an errant typo or two would be “Untitled Document”, but don’t let the blood scare you off from some hypnotic writing and dystopian dreams. Oh, and “Society Can Be A Bitch”. Society is as scary as hell. I mean, fashion models? Frightening. Not to mention alienation. Enjoyable, but scary. The Toucan does not do fashion, despite its last time out in a prom dress, and it only alienates itself on days ending in Y. But if good writing’s your goal, you’ll find it here.

Something you’ll also find, finally, are short contributor bios. It took us a while, but it seems like every other mag had them and we didn’t. And in this case, we thought society might be onto something. Sure you gave them a look already if you got to here, but just like you want to know the doctor who does your lobotomy, you want to know the people who write for your lit mag. And us, of course. We said something too, as if we don’t say enough. We think we have now.

We do really, really, need submissions to keep airborne, so send your souls and scribblings to thetoucanmag@gmail.com!!! And stay updated with our blog. Some exciting distribution possibilities are in the works, and the blog will carry the first developments of the flowers in our feathers should it thrive!

Ta Ta, Liz and Laura, (according to Dan Cirilo, we should be the edit-duces extraordinaire. Two-can, you know :) But we are, in fact, editrices.)