Subs are OPEN May 1-31

for Issue 3!

The theme is :

… by the dim light of the dash

Let’s talk about a summer night’s drive. For the lonesome and the romantic, the restless wanderers, the children dreaming in the backseat, the forgotten youths, the drivers and the passengers. Cicadas and constellations of fireflies. Aimless, winding roads. Stereo blasting, windows down, the stars at your heels and no clear destination.

As usual, the theme is loose and open to interpretation. In fact, we love creative and left-field takes on the theme.

PLEASE NOTE: This installment will be MUCH smaller than Issue 2 and space will be limited. The editor may close subs early depending on the response that we get.

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To submit, please email 1 - 4 poems 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. 

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

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. Please also include your Instagram / Threads / X / BlueSky handles if you want to be followed / tagged in posts in the event of your publication. Primarily, we operate on Instagram and X but are working on expansion. Our acceptance letter asks you for permission to post snippets of your work on social media to promote the issue.

Free subs. We do not charge for submissions, and we unfortunately cannot pay our contributors. Our issues are free for anyone to read, download or share.    

We nominate for Pushcart and Best of the Net. We also put in our best efforts to maintain encouraging relationships with our contributors by promoting their work on social media, in our issue and what comes after.

Previous contributors / submitters are welcome to submit again.

Newsletter subscribers get advanced notice on submission calls.

Response time. Depending on the number of submissions we receive, expect to hear from us within one month, but likely much sooner.  If you have not heard back from us after one month, feel free to inquire by replying back to your original email.

Simultaneous submissions are okay, but please promptly withdraw work accepted elsewhere by replying back to your original submission email.

Previously published work will not be accepted at this time. We don’t mind if your work has been previously self-posted on social media.

Rights. We want to be your piece’s first publication, but the rights to the work are always yours. Your work is your own.  If your piece is published elsewhere after publication here, we ask that you include a nod to us.

If you are able, please report your submission on Duotrope / Chill Subs. We are listed with both sites.

We will not read work that is intentionally hateful, nor will we entertain the saccharine.

We look forward to reading your work!

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Theme got you down? Still not sure what to send? We live for off-the-wall interpretations on our themes. We love experimental work, work that pushes boundaries, work that is unexpected or plays with the unfamiliar, the absurd, humor, hybrid forms, cut / pastes, erasures and found poems (with sources cited), rhyming poems, traditional forms, free verse, the surreal, prose poems, micro poems, works that cannot be defined… send them in!

The rules are very loose and we are always open to something new. The evidence of craft is what interests us most.

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Newsletter subscribers get advanced notice on submission calls!

If you have any questions, feel free to email the editor (engineidling@gmail.com).