Poets Wear Prada: August 2009

Submission Policy

Submissions to THE BUG BOOK are now closed. However, we will continue to post a sampling of poems accepted for the anthology as we continue to work our way through the flood of last minute submissions.

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.

Visit the online edition of SMOKE at:
http://thesmokingbook.blogspot.com/.

Monday, August 17, 2009

Zhuang Yisa | Watching DISCOVERY With You In A Foreign Country

Watching Discovery With You In A Foreign Country


The narrator tells us, his voice
calm and quietly fascinated:
                              there exist

in nature certain species of wasps
that stun their prey into submission

for an egg to be lodged
in the flesh, turning them into mere
incubators –

When the offspring begins
to participate in the cycle, the host
will die.

But until then, the host
lives, its destiny
paralysed against its will.

You see, my love, the venom
isn’t fatal; that is
the intention.

And this waiting
for your return, for the desires to flow
again, is gratitude

for the sting
that turns the living into meat, on which you feed.

By Zhuang Yisa

Zhuang Yisa lives in Singapore. His poetry has been published or forthcoming in Sargasso (Puerto Rico), Yuan Yang (Hong Kong), ditch (Canada), The Toronto Quarterly, Ganymede, The Los Angeles Review, Softblow, Danse Macabre, The Salt River Review, Shampoo and elsewhere. His poetry has also been anthologized in Ganymede Poets Vol. One (Ganymede Books, 2009) and Smoke (Poets Wear Prada, 2009).