Submission Guidelines

Marc Alan Di Martino


 
We’re seeking original work that sucker punches us
& pilfers our wallets, leads us down
the garden path, slides its uninvited hands
up our thighs on the L train - takes us
by surprise, if you will. We want work
that stretches boundaries so far they burst
like champagne bubbles under the tongue
and language falters, stars so bright they hurt
their galaxies, make us squint hard               we
                                                                             want
a skeleton key to our parents’ divorce
filings, our sexual appetites. Your verse
should be your best - send only your very best
poem, the one that can rape and pillage
our great-grandparents’ one-synagogue village
hot as a hopped-up band of Cossacks
prowling at midnight. Make us squirm
on our sofa chairs, discomfited by your words,
roll out of bed after a one-night stand
tongue-tied in love.    
                                           Your poems
should tickle us silly, each bright syllable
a spandrel, a mountain summit, a new planet
swimming into its ken, so perfect
you couldn’t possibly have written it.










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About the Author: Marc Alan Di Martino lives in Perugia, Italy. His work has been published in Rattle, Verse-Virtual, The Ekphrastic Review, Poetry Salzburg Review and other places, some of them no longer with us. He currently teaches English as a foreign language. His poetry is forthcoming.

GRAVEL