Choose your Reader…
If you are struggling to figure out which one of us to submit to, use this page to get an idea of our taste. These are non exhaustive lists of our things we may like, but feel free to surprise us! Trust your gut! Full send!
(Our masthead is below as well!)
What do we both like?
-Groovy, snappy, sound work, and musical language
-Inventive/experimental forms that support and enhance the content
-Surprising/unexpected language, imagery and ideas. Stuff that makes Taylor go “O_o” and Martheaus go “wooooo that’s good shit”
-Mom trauma (:
-Subs from BIPOC and LGBTQ+ writers. Subs from women, Palestinians, educators, and those with disabilities. Subs from anyone who has historically been marginalized due to their varying identities. Welcome, welcome, welcome.
What neither of us like?
-Hard, obvious end rhyming (unless you’re Kendrick Lamar. Kendrick, you can rhyme as much as you want)
-Racism, homophobia, zionism, transphobia, sexism, ageism, ableism ETC ETC ETC
(Seriously, we will just ignore your sub)
-Obfuscation with sesquipedalian vernacular (we’re not impressed by four dollar words that don’t add to meaning…but if they add meaning…
-We both have short attention spans, poems longer than two pages rarely (if ever) get accepted.
Keep scrolling for more specifics!
What is Taylor into?:
-More likely to like religious iconography. “god/God” stuff. (Religious trauma for everybody!)
-Animals
-Poems about all the things we inherit from our varying cultures
-Any poem that has the words “your body” or “the body” in it
-If your poem has the word “basketball” in it (or really any sport) it legally belongs to me (jokes…but send them here fr)
-Not a huge pop culture girly. Send your nerdy movie poems to Martheaus
-TURN NOUNS INTO VERBS!!!
***Bonus points for: dinosaur poems***
What is Martheaus into?
-Enjoys humorous poetry (everything from dark humor to the most absurd of squirrels)
-More likely to buy into straightforward narrative/conversational poems
-Really likes poems about the strangeness of love, and the strangeness of our bodies
-Loves poems that “poke the bear” (you can decide whatever bear I’m talking about)
-Send all your nature crap to Taylor
***Obscure nerdy allusions (might be an automatic acceptance if you reference Avatar the Last Airbender)***
If this doesn’t help, go read the poems we’ve already selected to see what our inclinations are like.
Meet the Brawlers
(Co-Founders and EIC’s)
Martheaus Perkins
he/him
Martheaus Perkins was born to a single mother in Center, Texas and a first-generation college graduate. He is the author of The Grace of Black Mothers (forthcoming in Trio House Press 2025). His poems and essays have been featured in Obsidian: Literature & Art, ballast, the museum of americana, The Worcester Review, PRISM international, Harpy Hybrid Review, West Trade Review, 805 Lit + Art, Longleaf Review, Genre: Urban Arts, and SoFloPoJo. The name “Martheaus” is a collection of each Black woman who helped raise him: “Mar-” for his grandmother’s nickname, “-Thea-” for his mother’s name, and “-us” for his big aunties.
Taylor Franson-Thiel
she/her
Taylor is a poet from Utah now based in Fairfax, Virginia. She’s been Pushcart nominated, and won the 2024 GMs Rinehart Poetry Prize. She placed second in the 2024 Bethesda Poetry Contest. Her poetry can be found in places such as SoFloPoJo, Identity Theory, and HAD, among others. Her debut poetry collection “Bone Valley Hymnal” is forthcoming in March 2025.
Surprise! Congrats on making it this far! This is just one of the Easter Eggs we’ve included on our site. Feel free to guess which avatar belongs to which EIC in your cover letter…
