Even eight thousand miles from the United States, the constant hammering of the American media machine reaches us. Our connections—wireless, satellite, cable—crackle with a seemingly endless loop of fear and consumption. But these connections have also allowed us to create what we hope is a respite from the noise, a chance to renew and refresh, to hear beyond the din to the place described in Imperial Vestments by The Pines where:

Loss
The last ground

alights at daybreak

Or to Steven Schroeder’s Phoenix, Colorado, where:

We reemerge and wait all night
for sizzling rain on the steel roof,
then rise in sun no longer ashen.

The voices in this issue cut through the noise. They offer clarity, hope, and, to borrow from Rigoberto González’s “Mortui Vivos Docent,” they offer a “music so pretty” it just must keep us “from ruining the terrorist world.”

So please enter, and hear the voices of all the remarkable poets who have created our second issue of diode.