Well, it’s time for me to say goodbye as editor-in-chief of OxMag. Everything I try to write comes out corny and disingenuous, and I’m not one for longwinded exits so I’ll just say thanks to Maggie Waz (one of our previous editors-in-chief) for giving me the job, thanks to the editors and staff, thanks to Joe Squance (our managing editor) and other Miami English faculty, and last thanks to the contributors.
I’m a runner and now seems like the best time to be that in a small Midwest college town. Oxford’s nothing but bones sans students. No one gets in my way on the sidewalks; sometimes I can go an entire hour-long run without seeing a single person. When I run along the empty roads and sidewalks, if I concentrate between breaths I can hear my own heartbeat. Not just the pulse in my ears, but my actual heart expanding and contracting. It’s a bit unnerving, but there’s a comfort to its cadence, a kind of proof of life. It’ll end sometime, of that we can all be sure, just as everything else does. But in the meantime it’s nice knowing it’s there.
Hope you enjoy this last full-length issue of the year. Be on the lookout for a summer EP to drop sometime in July along with the names of the winners of our Inaugural Golden Ox Award for Prose and Poetry.
-Matt