Our summer 2026 issue's theme will be wash. Send us your work about cleaning (the need for, act of, or aftermath), cleanliness (of self, others, objects, times, places, thoughts), ablution, purification, and the impact of washing. 

Deadline: July 1, 2026.

Submit one to five poems or one piece of short fiction less than 2,000 words.

Please put all of your poems into the same document. Do not submit more than one group of poems or more than one short prose piece to this call.

__________

"At the rest stop on the way to Mississippi

We found the butterfly mired in the oil slick;

its wings thick and blunted. One of us, tender in the fingertips,

smoothed with a tissue the oil

that came off only a little;

the oil-smeared wings like lips colored with lipstick

blotted before a kiss.

So delicate the cleansing of the wings I thought the color soft as

      watercolors

would wash off under the method of her mercy for something so slight

and graceful, injured, beyond the love of travelers."

                      —Angela Jackson, from "The Love of Travelers"