Submission Guidelines
Heidi Seaborn


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Please do not send us a poem about birds.
We have no interest in the chattering

             of starlings flying over the burned field 
             or the charm of finches that light

into your garden every morning.
We don’t give two hoots about rooks

              in a clamour, nighthawk kettles, wren
              herds, magpies in a tiding or knobs

of widgeons and flights of pigeons.
We could care less that a congress

              of ravens is called an unkindness
              or for your poem about two unkind

ravens quarrelling on a telephone line
stretched in front of the sea. Speaking

              of sea, please don’t send us poems
              about colonies of gulls or heron.

Especially no blue heron poems,
the world has too many already. 

               Don’t sneak a heron into your pond poem,
               already flush with mallards and paddling ducks.

God knows the world needs another
nightingale poem, but call us old fashioned,

                we’ll stick with Keats. We love
                the odd peacock sighting, but maybe

just a feather will do.  Please refrain
from ostentation. Don’t brood on pheasants

                 or exalt the lark or pity the turtle dove
                 or murder the crow. No sermonizing

on congregations of plovers or convocations
of eagles. No parliamentary oratory on owls.

If you do send us a bird poem, it better be good.

About the Author: Heidi Seaborn lives in Seattle with her unruly garden, handy husband and a lab named Fetch. Since she started writing a year ago, her poetry has appeared in Into the Void, Gold Man Review, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Carbon Culture Review, several anthologies, in a chapbook of her political poems Body Politic published by Mount Analogue Press, on a Seattle bus and elsewhere.  Find her on Twitter ​here.

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