Submission Guidelines
by Kat Giordano
we are a journal of fiction and poetry.
we are a journal of words.
we are a journal of transgressive, gritty, outsider lit.
we have a name like [Cardinal direction] [U.S. state] Review.
we have a name like Gossamer or TOILET STAIN.
we have a name that uses special unicode characters i am too lazy to type here.
the name of our journal is your favorite color, followed by the name of the street you grew up on, followed by the name of your first grade pet.
the name of our journal is the first three digits of your social security number, followed by the next two digits of your social security number, followed by the final four digits of your social security number (please tell us the name of our journal).
we want your best work.
we want good fiction and good poetry.
we want your heart, your soul, the story only you can tell.
we want words that shock us and confuse us and make us laugh.
we want words that make us feel like shit.
we want words that tell us they love us and then damage us over time through a slow backslide into emotional unavailability that leaves us wondering what we did wrong.
we don't feel interested in words or writing or much of anything anymore, and we want the memory of how that passion felt.
we want you so bad, oh baby, oh baby.
we want your morning breath, your secret car-farts, whatever's growing in the mug you left sitting on your desk.
we want your lunch money. we want your car. we want your girlfriend.
we want the velvety skin on the inside of your wrist.
we want your filmy membranes, your nose drippings and popsicle stains.
we want anything that could be described with the words "fetid" and/or "residue."
we want warm root beer in a glass.
we want a little pomeranian wearing a hat.
we want you to delete that recording of us drunkenly hyperventilating into the toilet at applebee's.
we want you to delete our nudes and our number.
we want pizza.
we want a small harem of hot emo boys to take turns passionately validating our feelings while they massage our neck.
we want our cat to stop sticking his face in our food.
we want an ass tattoo but know deep down it's not actually going to happen.
we want a snack but there's not really anything good in the house so we just keep opening the fridge over and over until we're desperate enough to eat something less thrilling, like a pickle or a slice of cheese.
we want something we cannot articulate and don't know where to find, and we will spend the rest of our lives mauling the people we love in vain trying to claw it out of them. our time on this earth will be marked by a pattern of fleeting, almost manic highs at the prospect of finally filling the swirling chasm inside of us, followed by crushing and prolonged lows at the recurring realization that such a space can never be filled, we will try everything from drugs to sex to angry rampages to asceticism and punishing solitude and continue to come up empty. then, we will meet someone. that someone will remind us of something we'd forgotten. that person will bring us yellow light that we mistake for fulfillment or god. this person will insist on staying, will rebuff any and all fears until we almost trust their permanence. then, one day, we will be lying in bed beside this person and feel heaviness, the imminent ending, and be crushed at how familiar it seems. the next day, they will wake us up before work and kiss our forehead and something about the way they slide out of the bedroom will catch on one of the loose loops closing our heart, send the whole thing exploding open. in the fallout, we'll feel around for that yellow light from before. we'll know it existed, but only like an idea or black-and-white sentence. we won't be able to remember it.
Kat Giordano was born in Philadelphia and it’s been downhill ever since. They have written two other poetry collections: Tell Me You’ve Earned It (Gob Pile Press, 2023) and The Poet Confronts Bukowski’s Ghost (Philosophical Idiot, 2013) as well as one novel, The Fountain (Thirty West Publishing, 2020). They also run the once-defunct now not-defunct literary website VANITY (vanitypress.co) and can be found all over the internet as @giordkat and at katgiordano.com. Kat is very cool. You love them.
