SUBMISSION POLICY
Poetry (any form or style) and Micro or Flash Fictions wanted for an anthology on SMOKE. Not just the black clouds rising from the five-alarm fire next door, or the billowing plumes of smoke warning us of a forest fire, or the emissions from factory smoke stacks, apartment house incinerators, and crematoriums, smoke rings rise from cigarettes, smoke pours out of headshops, pipe shops & cigar stores--see that purple haze rising over the fields of poppies and marijuana we just planted--we've used it to communicate via smoke signals and skywriting, to cover our tracks and disappear with and without mirrors, combat the enemy on and off the battlefield, kill bugs, flavor food, cure illness, declare peace treaties, and fragrance our homes. Got the idea? Release it onto the page.
Guidelines: Submit up to three poems/micro fictions or two flash fictions at a time with a fascinating bio of 35 words or less, not just limited to publication credits, copy/pasted in the body of an e-mail (no attachments, please) to roxy533 at yahoo dot com & violetwrites at nyc dot rr dot com. We will also entertain up to six one-liners or 2 short stand up routines at time. Previously published work is OK as long as authors have retained the copyright, which will be returned to them after publication. Simultaneous submissions are encouraged. If your work is accepted elsewhere, and you still have obtained rights to republish, just let us know where and we'll be happy to acknowledge the other publication.
If you do not receive a response from us within a month of your submission considered it rejected and feel free to submit again. Due to the volume of submissions we cannot respond to each and every individual submission. Selection for the on-line edition are made on a ongoing basis as we receive your submissions. However, final selections for the print edition will made after the October 31st deadline. (In otherwords not everything that made the cut for the online edition will appear in print.) Please do not query. When in doubt, send the submission to roxy533 at yahoo dot com & violetwrites at nyc dot rr dot com.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Camp Fire Nights
Flames leaping upward
Tongues licking golden
Orange, yellow, red all the
Bright colors always changing
Never still, slowly the tongues
Grow smaller, the colors darken
Deep crimson– a last glow– then ash
Soot. Darkness embraces us.
Everyone stands up, brushes off
The smoke, stamps out the remains, the night
Enclosing us – total darkness but we can
See the stars. We call “Good-night”
Crawl into our tents and sleeping bags
The children listen for coyotes
Fish splash, crickets chirp - we fall asleep.
Do we dream of the first people?
The people whose only light was fire?
People who would freeze if the fire
Went out? How careful they
would have been – always feeding
The flames, storing wood, coal anything
That could burn, give out a spark
Anything that would keep the darkness
Far away.
We strike a match. Paper, sticks, a flash
In the foggy dawn. The battered coffee pot
The one we save for camp outs. Wood
Smoke, coffee, the fishy smell from the
Lake. Quick skinny-dips. Lucky us
The elements at our finger tips- Air
Earth, water, fire. Our playthings.
Our toys.
by Marian Veverka
Marian Veverka has spent her life on the shores of Lake Erie. She has written two novels, unpublished, and lots of small stuff--poems, CNF, short stories--some published.
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