P – Call for Submissions to the engine(idling. Theme: Haunts & Hometowns

Theme: Haunts & Hometowns

Can we ever really go back home? Where do we belong?

Vibes: The editor is thinking about things like… the muted colors of dusk, alley ways, nostalgia pangs, peeling paint, dingy taverns, dark cafes, city stoops, Schlitz Ice, bonfires, creeks, vintage road maps, overgrown lots, park benches, strained relationships, yellow wallpaper, row houses, Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World, street art, regional dialects and slang, squeaky screen doors, brick-red, sun-bleached Polaroids, clap board, kitchen scents, mustard and avocado colored appliances, tenement buildings, door buzzers, attic apartments, stair wells, wood paneling, found families, city gardens, rose-tinted glasses, generational trauma, memory lanes, secret hideouts, abandoned farmhouses, cellar doors, chainlink fences, and all things aged, fading, lost, ambered, and/or in disrepair. It can be spooky, though this is not really what we’re after.

Format: Please use a standard font.  We will not be able to accommodate specialized formatting. Tabs and indents are okay, however, lots of white space, shape poems, or poems with specific spatial needs don’t translate well.

If your poem is more than a single page, please indicate whether or not there is a stanza break at the page break.

To submit, please email 1 – 4 poems and / or visual art pieces to the editor at engineidling@gmail.com.

You may send poems as a .docx attachment, or copy / paste them into the body of the email.

Please send .jpegs for visual art submissions.

You can submit in one category or both categories in the same email.

Cover letters are appreciated but not necessary. At minimum, include a short third person bio, with your name (or pen name) as you would like it to appear in the issue.

Your bio can list a handful of your previous publications, and / or something interesting about yourself. A few lines will do.