editor's note

Length or girth. Which is getting measured. Remember this is modern day England‘s, Queen Elizabeth II’s mother, that we are talking about on our now traditionally letter adorned back cover. Racy tabloid coverage or innocent obligatory communication—either is delectable and sadly relished, especially after reading the “personal” meltdowns’ of everyone and anyone who’s ever had contact with the American prince, JFK Jr. And I was not going to write about this. Rimbaud.

ROYALTY
One fine morning, in the land of very gentle people, a superb man and woman shouted in the public square: “Friends, I want her to be queen!:” “I want to be queen?” She laughed and trembled. He spoke to his friends of revelation, of ordeals terminated. They leaned on each other in ecstasy.”
Sosa and Maguire are tied at 37. Griffey Jr. is at 33. Can it be duplicated. Nike only hopes so. The season of home run royals rolls towards the fall. 10 zingmagazines. Not even a season really, rather something like four years, but it’s before the end of the millennium. Some type of marathon “curatorial crossing” cross roads . . . Nothing quite like comparing or competing, but zingmagazine is the contingent, the underground, the alternative. Fit within, barely. Any one of these three guys is my hero or the other three that are approaching the 3000 hit mark and barely remembered in the home run frenzy: Boggs, Gwynn, Ripkin.
They were indeed sovereigns for a whole morning while all the houses were adorned with crimson hangings, and for an entire afternoon, while they made their way toward the palm gardens.
—Rimbaud

The Dada chance game: our plastic palms, our garden. Trying to find an appropriate font choice, these words emerged as Laurel pulled Rimbaud’s Illuminations from the shelf and opened to the passage “Royalty”, however randomly. Harkening the oddity, the harlequin, the one who really enjoys the feast or fantasy because they’re just the essence of what it is of. Really, though, the sentence ends in a preposition, it speaks more to readers of zingmagazine than any editor, copy or otherwise. Length or girth. Which is getting measured.

Devon Dikeou
New York, New York
1999