Most people think there are enough poetry magazines, electronic and otherwise, available.
We're not so sure.
A lot of them are filled with abstractions and angst, too many references to Sophocles, William of Orange, and Heidegger. We aren't quite sure what the Gordian knot is, and a Klein bottle is a topographical mystery, too. It's not that there's anything wrong with all that stuff, but it's not what we're looking for, and we suspect we aren't alone.
Inspired by the poems of people like Billy Collins, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Russell Edson, Mary Oliver, and others, we're looking for poems rooted in the things we handle every day: rusting shovels, leather workboots, carburetors, and so on. We're looking for the kind of poems you might write on the inside of a used-up matchbook in a scratchy ballpoint pen. We're looking for poems about ideas that you just can't let yourself forget.
We're here to get our hands dirty.
It wouldn't be fair or honest to say we know exactly what we're looking for; like any piece of art, we know it when we see it. Maybe.
Sometimes we're surprised when we like something we weren't expecting, like tasting cottage cheese again for the first time in twenty years and finding that it isn't that bad after all.
So, send in your rusting shovels, your cottage cheese, and your sunsets the color of tarnished silver.
We'll publish on an irregular basis, at first, depending on how many submissions roll in. At least in the beginning, Matchbook Poetry will be electronic only. To read our current issue, simply click on "Current Issue" to the left.
We'll also update the website a little, but we're confident that the poetry, not the look of the website, is the thing.