When a new literary journal smashes the bottle of cheap, effervescing champagne against its iron sides, pronouncing itself seaworthy, the problem of its existential self-justification arises: why yet another electronic literary journal in a sea already glutted with verbiage? Are there not enough of you already?

At heart, we're basically dictators, the three of us: fascists and totalitarians of our own, personal aesthetic visions that we wish to impose on the rest of you, and it legitimizes our literary chauvinism to have others, whom we believe represent or somehow embody that aesthetic vision, published in our name. We throw mud and water balloons and rubber chickens at each other until we have agreed upon who is to be in the inaugural issue of the While Whale Review. We hide behind the curtain and pull the strings. The marionette begins to move; perhaps he speaks.

But it is not our Siren voice that draws us nigh to fragments of shore between groves of trees. Closer to shipwreck. It is yours.

Advice to all sailors: stay away from sharp rocks.

Burst your hot heart upon it.