Submission guidelines

"For it is not so much a matter of being chosen, as of not being excluded"—Louis Simpson,

New Lines for Cuscuscaraway and Mirza Murad Ali Beg

 

She hums a thoughtful hmm

at the poet's name on the envelope,

she's Asst. Editor of [insert name here] Review.

 

Somewhere in her the name triggers

a grainy chain of Cheech & Chong,

a click clack from her mind's projector.

 

She pulls out the poems,

really likes them but,

Rolando Lopez, Rolando Lopez—that name.

 

She runs them by her editor,

not expecting a new perspective

more for affirmation.

 

These are awesome poems but…

I know, she says.

Write up a good rejection letter, he says.

 

Their slush pile—packed with like voices

from New York, Boston, Vermont,

Ann Arbor, Michigan.

 

And there's nothing wrong with identity,

it forms our foundations but it is not a tastemaker,

it shouldn't keep some people in & others out.

 

Hey, this isn't the prickly poem of poetry's politics,

it's another poem,

waiting to be published.