First Light

The inaugural issue of Arid gathers seven poets, two essayists, and a portfolio of photographs from the basin and range — the country south of Pahrump where the highway forgets itself among creosote and the air tastes of mineral and heat.

We chose First Light because the desert is a place that teaches you to wait — for shadow, for cool, for the small revisions of color that the morning grants and then takes away. Every piece in this issue is a kind of waiting.