9.9.2024

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Photo: Annie Spratt

We will not accept
any “work”
you’ve published yourself,
print or online. Try
to keep up
with our reasoning.

First, it must be bad,
that sad thing
you catapulted
past the gatekeepers.

Otherwise
you would have asked us
to say “Not this one”
or “Came close”
or “Try us again”
(if your poem was
not bad bad
but also not good).

Second, and this is
the key point,
we can’t take the risk
your self-published work
may have found
earlier readers
in numbers greater
than our own
modest audience,
meaning those rare souls
who open
our journal’s pages
and don’t simply use
the cover
as a drink coaster.

Further, imagine
the letdown
our readers would feel
were they to find out
your poem
had a history.

Wouldn’t that be like
blowing up
a pizzeria,
only to find sluts
among one’s
celestial virgins?

Which is not to say
we don’t take
simultaneous
submissions—we do,
with pleasure
(and we’re not faking),
not merely pleasure
of the kind
attendant upon
simultaneous
submission
in other contexts
but pleasure also
in knowing
you will have to wait
for gatekeepers spread
far and wide
over the landscape
of literary
consequence
to review your work
and debate whether
to admit
you to the canon.

Even more than this,
we relish
how long you will wait
in your demeaning
posture of
total submission,
for by submitting
you endorse
our authority.

We cannot pay you
for your work
—did we mention that?—
and we will require
six dollars
for each submission
(send us up to four
examples
of your alleged work).
But feel free to spend
twelve dollars
for a speedier
rejection. That said,
you are urged
to read the guidelines
with strict attention
to the things
we tell you we want,
such as poetry
spelunking
the liminal space
between the surreal
and the lip
of eternity.

We strongly suggest
you purchase
our latest issue—
seventeen dollars
plus shipping
by Media Mail.

Not to dwell too much
on money
(our apologies),
but you may have heard
someone say
“gift economy.”

We’re saying it now.

Understand
your work as a gift
written at no cost
to yourself,
or to your readers.

And understand us
as God’s gift
to your so-called work.

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NOTES

1. Over the weekend,

   Becky Tuch
   hosted this discussion about whether editors of literary journals should consider a submission “previously published” if the work has appeared only on the author’s personal Facebook page or other social media accounts. Naturally, that discusion recalls this one initiated by
   Timothy Green
   .

2. If it matters to you, may it please you to know that this poem’s 123 lines comprise a chain of 41 “exploded” lunes (tercets with a syllabic pattern of 5/3/5). More about the lune here and here.

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If you like my so-called work and are looking for the sweet spot between following and becoming a paying subscriber, you can buy me a coffee, with my humble thanks and servile appreciation.