Dear Reader's future

Charley and Talis are actively looking for ways to make Dear Reader better, for readers and writers like. Since the start of 2021, we've put out themed calls for submissions and we've also updated (albeit on an ad hoc basis) our inspiration page, with pictures and music for stumped authors to use as prompts. While throwing ideas around this week, we made a drastic decision that we nevertheless feel is a sensible move for the site. So, following the final Wednesday in July, when two amazing poems will be published, Dear Reader will be closing down entirely.

For a month.

During this month, Charley and Talis are going to be editing and tweaking the site a lot. Rest assured, though, that if you're already published with us then your work will remain published. If you're hoping to be published with us, you are still encouraged to submit work during this month period, but note that Charley and Talis may be a little slower than usual with replies.

After this month - on September 1 - Dear Reader will relaunch with a new call for submissions, asking for:

poetry
flash fiction (word count limits to be decided)
reviews (word count limits to be decided)

That's right; we'll be throwing our doors open to a new spread of genres that we hope will make the site a more varied and dynamic home for authors to submit to. On September 1, then, we will update the site with new submission guidelines and announce our call-out for expanding genres - as well as welcoming back poetry, too!

This is a big move for the site and we hope you're all as excited as we are about it. For a small sample of the reviews and flash we'll be expecting, Charley and Talis have published their own works (from these two genres respectively) on the site for your reading pleasure this week. It's also worth keeping a look out throughout the end of July because we've got some corkers listed for publication.

For now, though, Charley and Talis can't thank people enough for their continued support and we hope to see more of you, and read more from you, in the coming months.

All our best wishes and good writing vibes -

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Home by Jessa Forest

Home scratches at her shingles with tree branch fingers, pulls the air conditioning unit close to her grimy aluminum siding, and keens an empty song of mourning. We found her wandering the tornado snarled wild three months ago, starved and lonely. She doesn’t know how to take care of herself, you see? We fed her shards of dining room tables, kindling for the fireplace, and cast iron bathtubs clawed feet first. She was slow to recover so we gutted her plumbing, ripped out her nerves, and rewired the electricity. She let the water in every time it rained so we put a new roof on her and let her out for regular walks around the wolf pen. Let her mingle with the vultures, I said, let her feel useful and clean up the dead but no one wanted to listen. We found rot an mold in her corners, infused her insulation with antibiotics, and quarantined her for two weeks while she belched ladderback chairs, sofa cushions, wind chimes, and broken bookcases. She still has her bad days. After feeding time

“Are You So Tired Then, Stranger?” by Ace Boggess

—Dick Allen, “B&B” Wind exhausts with its icy fists. Knives of rain wear me down, & leaves in their helicopter swirls like leaflets dropped from a plane. October depletes me, & November. They’ve too much busyness. They send me spinning, dancing, lonely with the rake, the broom. I surrender, collapsing like an old barn, debris of me piling in a chair with clear view of the television. News is on. It spends me. Talk of politics, also. I’d like to shut up the voices that fatigue. They hum like a B-flat in the pipes. They bicker & scold, condemn. They expend me like carrying groceries up a flight of stairs until I’m too drained to care which side they’re on. --- Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, including Escape Envy (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021), I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So , and The Prisoners . His writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, and other journals. An ex-c

Examples Of Resilience by Jen Feroze

Look to the city’s forests. Those monoliths and museums, cathedrals and palaces and theatres whose stories have sunk deep under the pavements, have rooted themselves in the silt at the bottom of the river. Think of the architects spreading sketches across tired wood, holding up samples of mosaic tile, wondering what sort of mark they’ll leave. Think of the tongues of flame, the sirens, the silence before the shells fall. Think of the thousands and thousands of feet that have walked here. The myriad secrets whispered across the vast blue dome, where the apostles keep them safe. Think of the nightingale you heard here that night in November, wrapping its song around St Paul’s in ribbons of winter. Tiny in the face of all that history. Dauntless, nonetheless. --- Jen Feroze lives by the sea in Essex with her husband and two small sleep thieves. Her work has recently appeared in Atrium, Ink Sweat & Tears, Ekphrastic Review and The Madrigal, among others. Her first collection, The C

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