Dear readers,

I cannot describe to you the smile on my face the moment Make it Rain came on. I must add it was not a moment when Make it Rain by Fat Joe featuring Lil’ Wayne typically comes on. I was not in a dance club with friends or controlling the TouchTunes digital jukebox with a strict ‘bangerz only’ philosophy in a neighborhood dive bar. I was totally alone, standing on a blacktop, a biting early winter wind rippling through the mesh of my shirt, headphones in my ears with an unending playlist of early-to-mid aughts hype songs all queued up, and the ball in my hands. 

So, not totally alone. 

I posted on social media earlier this year about an annual ritual of mine to always find a playground to shoot around by myself on November 23rd. To make a long story short, as a kid I loved basketball and I also couldn’t take a hint. The combination of these two things led to me getting cut from every damned team I ever tried out for. Until November 23rd, 2005, my senior year of high school. I’ve found a hoop to shoot around on every November 23rd ever since. 

The lyrics of Make it Rain don’t quite hold up today, but its hypnotizing distortion does and it came through the queue at the perfect time. My jumper, rusty from nearly 364 days of neglect, had finally awoken after several rounds of clanging off every inch of the court’s double-rim and the ball started cutting through the wind to find the bottom of the net. 

My favorite part of this ritual is it always has a moment of transformation. It’s not always marked by one of the finest club beats of 2006, but it always comes. The moment when everything besides the hoop and the ball melts away. The memory of the previous shot is gone the second the ball touches my fingertips. Time is gone. So is fear. The only two things remaining are the next shot to take, and the joy in my bones that’s been there since the moment I first fell in love with this game.

On this November 23rd, as Fat Joe and Weezy were turned up way too loud in my airpods, it hit me how similar this ritual is to the writing practice. Sentences on a blank page are just like shots on an open court. The majority of what we write doesn’t get published. So much of the practice goes completely unseen. 

The work in the fifth issue of the Under Review is an absolute celebration of ritual. Of commitment to the craft and practice. Each piece wowed me in a different way. Each piece is symbolic of a different writer with their own rituals, their own stories, essays, and poems of transformation. Writing that is as heartwarming and humorous as it is fearless and ferocious. 

Writing I am proud to make a home for in the Under Review.   


Terry Horstman
Executive Editor
the Under Review