Mudfish 26, a journal of poetry, art, and fiction, features 78 photographs by street
photographer, and portraitist, Lawrence Applebaum, whose candid shots of poets,
friends, launch parties and Mudfish headquarters, provide an intimate glimpse into the
world and aura of Mudfish. This is the quintessential Mudfish: the founding fathers—cf.
the three on the cover—plus marvelous new talent. The whole issue takes on the
familiarity and intimate feel of a family album.

Renowned poet Billy Collins is the judge of the 19 th Mudfish Poetry Prize. The winning
poem, Allen Brafman's "Together on the Uptown 6," is a fitting companion to this
photographer, famous for his New York subway photos. All the poems that follow are a
full-throated declaration of the American experience.

The photographs chronicle the story of Mudfish and the poems, in keeping with the
Mudfish aesthetic, all tell a story. They are personal and profound. And unforgettable.
The end of life is a theme and the way it relates to childhood. There are "Mother" poems
and "Father" poems. Beautiful and moving poems. Cancer is a leitmotif. Nevertheless,
"always leave them laughing," is our goal.
A new writer, Joshua Even Eisen, seems a contemporary Hemingway. Sophie Kohler, in
an excerpt from a coming-of-age novel, is a delightful new voice. Stephanie Emily
Dickinson is featured once again with her exquisite, painful, medicinal prose. Her prose
that is poetry. In the first paragraph of "Cancer in the Afternoon World" she mentions the
6 train:
"For years in bright sunshine, I marched on this sidewalk to the Astor Place subway to catch
the 6 Train to work, returning late. Those hurrying mornings a youngish homeless man shouted,
'City Queen!' and would kiss my hand when I gave him a dollar."
The writing in Mudfish 26 knits itself together into a mysterious unity, as if all of these
authors were being guided by an invisible hand. The lone ant of Billy Collins' poem,
"Why I'm Incapable of Writing a Novel"

a lone ant
hauling a relatively enormous crumb
about half again its size, across the surface
of the table on which he had been weeping
has wandered into Stephanie Dickinson's prose:
"Ants and flying mites had lost their way landing on a page of my open book. I took a deep
breath and exhaled them back into their world. When ants in pupa were sick they sent out
chemical messages alerting their brethren ants to come and destroy them. They began peeling
off their cocoon readying themselves to be bitten to death by adult ants. It was suicide to protect
others. My cancer, too, gave off messages."

Dell Lemmon writes, in her poem "50 th High School Reunion": "It all started with a
dream."

I never imagined living
this long and when you get this old,
it's as if you are already dead
and everything is a dream.

And as she says, "Aren't we supposed to be everybody in our dreams?"
It is as if we are all truly "together on the Uptown 6."