How we negotiate our way through life’s many rites of passage reflects, even defines, who we are as we hasten toward the inevitable. From childhood we share the right to evolve into adolescence, celebrating our birthdays with cake and a tally of lit candles. After youth, middle age is upon us like a fast-rising tide. Picking up speed as they expire, our days fly from senescence to the burial rites we are forced to attend but are unable to observe. And through it all we celebrate and suffer while marking milestones with rituals of all sorts.
The baptism, the Shahada, the Kumbh Mela. The benchmarks of colostrum, milk, milk teeth, wisdom teeth, false teeth. Menarche, menopause. Bat and bar mitzvahs, first communions, Quinceañeras and the Amish rite of rumspringa. A first paying job, a driver’s license. The farewell to virginity. Discovery and embrace of sexual orientation. Falling in love and partnering, raising children in the same society of customs and sacraments their own kids may well be born into. Wedding anniversaries layer one after the other like sedimentary stone, each marking an epoch. Or else comes the amicable or acrimonious divorce and a new passage into another round of rights and rites.
Is the legend true that submerging your face in the river for seven seconds under the Sligachan Old Bridge means one will be blessed with eternal beauty? And if not, why do people trek to the Isle of Skye to do so? We are creatures of rites. Some rational, some foolish. Some kindly, some ugly. The gang initiation, the freshman’s hazing, the declaration that starts and surrender that ends a war, brushing your teeth like clockwork everyday. At a crossroads we try to take the right fork but often take the wrong.
This issue explores the nature of rights and rites that define critical markers in our lives. The examples above barely scratch the surface of ceremonies, religious and secular, that we experience over the arc of a lifetime.
HOW TO SUBMIT
We are delighted to announce that our Submittable window will open on Friday, June 5th, and close a full month later at midnight on Friday, July 5th. Please send your best innovative poetry, fiction, essays, hybrid or other writings, for us to consider for publication in either Conjunctions:86, Rights of Passage or Conjunctions online.
Our guidelines are few but important. While we will consider simultaneous submissions, please let us know immediately if your work has been accepted elsewhere. Pleases also note that partial submission withdrawals are strongly discouraged. Our fee is $4.00 per submission. We will do our very best to respond to your work within 6-8 months after receipt with the intention of getting back to you sooner than that. Please refrain from querying about the status of a submission until 8 months have passed. As always, we only consider previously unpublished work.
We look forward to reading your Submissions!
