outdoor view of the poetry foundation building in Chicago
people are always asking me “I wanna read some poems but I hate everything I read in high school”
to those people I say “reconsider Emily Dickinson, and read this blog”
here are 11 good poems you should read, with links to Poetry Foundation prints
www.lazyandentitled.org?p=162658341
timely
this is a reminder that our subs are open until May 15 -- links in bio :D
bright orange roses with stylized script text in black. on a green background, we have the web address which is delicate emissions dot com, and a list of what is on the site: our current issue, about us, masthead, all social links, and guidelines and submission form. on a black backer it says, don't worry, we haven't taken anything down!
Our website is up at DelicateEmissions.com! Within the next few months, our past issues should all be there too. Don't worry -- we're not deleting any accounts now (though we deleted our X account a couple years ago), so past contributors can still find your stuff where we left it! LinkTree, too!
Wishing you safety!
bright orange roses with stylized script text in black. on a green background, we have the web address which is delicate emissions dot com, and a list of what is on the site: our current issue, about us, masthead, all social links, and guidelines and submission form. on a black backer it says, don't worry, we haven't taken anything down!
Our website is up at DelicateEmissions.com! Within the next few months, our past issues should all be there too. Don't worry -- we're not deleting any accounts now (though we deleted our X account a couple years ago), so past contributors can still find your stuff where we left it! LinkTree, too!
I think we’re all lonely, J-T. Thanks for sharing — online is neat & professional! Thinking about how even 20 years ago if it wasn’t in print somewhere, it didn’t really count.
taking that as a compliment! (This was Dusti's two hours of gardening today except it was...several hours at a computer with not quite enough breaks to please the back.)
so true -- my work has found home in some surprising places. I try to remember that it's an ever-changing field.
I appreciate that! I've got a couple of publications that are print only and they're really special to me because of the editorial vision.
Dusti really wants to figure out how to turn those little Wordpress logos in the social platform section into the logos for the actual social platforms! That's probably the next project, after these MA papers get written.
The biggest task will be bringing over all our old issues, which are spread out across the internet and are still available on our LinkTree. It's kind of the task of least concern right now.
Well, well, well. We have a website. Improvements coming as the editor's skills and finances increase.
delicateemissions.wordpress.com
Thank you! So we have them and @moistpoetryjournal.bsky.social so far. I’m on a big learning curve here and even a few examples of well-regarded journals (which these are) is helpful!
Thanks for weighing in. As a past contributor and someone in the field, I do value your thoughts on this!
I decided at the beginning that I would never charge for submissions, and I plan to stick to it. There is negligible income (I’ve started tracking dollars and hours spent vs dollars in and it’s alarming) which is fine because this one was never supposed to be a job.
Any other not-institutionally published litmags wanna weigh in on this? We want our poets to be seen, read, and heard! We want to protect their work, and while we (like SO MANY OUT THERE) can only pay in contributor copies, we don't want them taken advantage of.
We are definitely proceeding as normal with the June 2026 issue! And we're also pondering the prospect on maintaining an online presence where we promote our poets instead of publishing the poems online, and sending more copies to the poets to distribute as they see fit.
Hard decisions, especially as it is about $95 in printing costs alone to print 40 copies of the zine. We don't have access to free color printing like we did before. It's also a beautiful artifact of poetry and when kind folks send us $10 it's $10 less out of our grocery/new eyeglasses budget!
But if people don't want to submit writing to something that is print-only and doesn't have a wide distribution (which we kinda get), that takes away the joy of hand-making the zine! And increases the chances of awful AI scraping (which we all know is happening on every social media site we use too)
We have increasing concerns over two things: how expensive it is to make a zine everybody wants but nobody buys (it's fine, we want people to have it, we'll give it away!) and the reality of AI scraping our poets' work from the many sites where we post it.
Poll (of sort) for poets. Do you prefer to have your poems published in:
A. online-only publications
B. print-only publications (even with narrow distribution)
C. hybrid-only (weird wording but you know what we mean)
this is a reminder that our subs are open until May 15 -- links in bio :D
Thanks, Aaron. That means a lot!
A cool thing about our zine is that we publish new poets alongside established ones.
a faded and muted dilapidated cemetery setting. In black stylized text on a sheer white backing is the following: Gethsemane by Julio César Villegas storming cemeteries halfway acid tripping how did you do this I beg each headstone wildflowers bed you wild boys wild elders pretend they’re forever out there but not here doorbells are eyes now camps scream in tongues they return why not you concentrate concentrate please this isn’t a world to live or leave yet leaves rage as my only response
"Gethsemane" by Julio César Villegas from Delicate Emissions Vol V, Issue 2, # 18. POET BIO: Julio César Villegas: Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico — raised in Essex County, New Jersey. Puerto Rico Se Levanta. Read more at linktr.ee/jcvillegas.
a grey background with shimmering, falling gold, bronze, and white dots that look like lights. White text on a black backing. This is the text: You by R James Sennett Jr rose above the metal table, didn’t you? Bright light sucked you up, didn’t it? You floated but not too high because you could still see us. It felt good, but you decided to come home, didn’t you?
"You" by R James Sennett Jr. from Delicate Emissions vol V, Issue 2, # 18. POET BIO: R James Sennett Jr lives, works, breathes, and chases his muse in Louisville, Kentucky. His poetry has appeared in numerous publications for which he is grateful.
background of a green bush and white text on a green background. The text is this: Thy Wee Bit Housie by Ryan Farrell Evicting the first one was out of the question. It was the coldest winter in over a decade— the mouse would not survive out there. With infinite indiscriminate compassion I let the little thing share my home. There was a second, a mousewife, and she bore him sleek timorous sons and daughters like oats on a bowing storehouse floor. The winter waned, mouse begat mouse, and with every step I feel one of them burst underfoot.
"Thy Wee Bit Housie" by Ryan Farrell from Delicate Emissions Vol V, Issue 2, # 18. POET BIO: Ryan Farrell is a middle school English teacher in Ohio. He enjoys writing poetry in his spare time. He likes animals.
Micro-fiction "The BLT Festival" by Robert John Miller
“…sometimes too the animals would play tricks, and one year a wild coyote had only pretended to be taxidermized and he ate Bill, founder of Wild Bill’s Wild Taxidermized Coyotes, Ltd.”
www.bloodhoneylit.com/fiction/the-...
a pink feathery background with stylized text saying that delicate emissions poetry zine volume 5 issue 2 number 18 is accepting submissions from april 15 to may 15, and that guidelines and the submission form are on our link tree in our bio
Opening subs a few hours early because Thursday is one of those 12 hour days for our editor! Here's the link! Share with your friends! forms.gle/fv67hsVVid2W...