issue 5: welcome home

Donal Mahoney (poems)

Marie Shield (flash)

Gary Glauber (poems)

Denny E. Marshall (drawings)

Michelle Amerson (poems)

James Browning Kepple (poems)

Summer of course is hibernation time for poets, everything slows down. The heat overwhelms, precipitation eludes participation, body and mind temporarily become as one, the metaphors suffers. Simply put, they're too put together, too damn happy.

Or they just get lazy-hazy and spoiled on easy margaritas by the pool side.

So we turn to the southern hemisphere and say: your turn. The southern hemisphere hasn't answered yet. Fucking southern hemisphere.

Anyway. That's why we've slowed down. There have been no good poems. No good stories. Except the ones you see above, yes, they are quite good. We have not given up yet, but we have slipped into our strap-less sandals and decided to put ourselves on stand-by until something grabs us by our wits and wears us down with something akin to passion.

This is what we want:

A poem/story that is about something real that you care about. Put something on the line. Write with detail. Don't show. Don't be clever. Read a bunch of poetry, read a bunch of stories, and preferably not online. To every poem you write, read ten, etc. Learn your shit and ask yourself why should someone reading this give a shit? If you have written 6 poetry books in the last two years, you don't know what the fuck you're doing. No one is obligated to read it. No one will read it. Make choices. It doesn't matter how talented you are if you don't make any choices.

75 % of applicants we have decided are poet-robots sprung out of random poetry generators. So stop it.

Another note on submissions: the smaller your bio is the more we will like you. No essays. We really don't care if you've been published by Chainsaw Triple Blood 5 and Bookworm Trampoline Ink.

That's it, I guess.

For the next month and a half we will turn into a museum. Stay tuned, or whatever, #tag peace and love.

Your mistress in distress,

Lord Byron