Please read our submission guidelines carefully. Anything that doesn’t follow the guidelines below will be deleted.
Prose Poems is an online-only publication, though we may branch out to broadsides or limited print editions at some point. We only publish prose poetry, but short-shorts and flash fiction are fine, as long as they are a paragraph. Each poem should be a page long, maximum. Please, do not send any other styles (free verse, formal verse), or individual poems longer than a page. Simultaneous submissions are fine. Please submit a one-paragraph author biography with your submission. No attachments please. Simply paste your poems into the body of an email (or send as a PDF).
Simultaneous submissions are encouraged, but please notify us if your work is accepted. We do not accept previously published work. Also, please only submit one batch of poems at a time, and please don’t submit more than once in short success unless requested.
Translations are allowed, but only accept side-by-side translations; if you are submitting a translation, you must have the rights to reproduce the original text as well.
Important: No AI-generated or ChatGPT-produced work. Robots (and tech bros) are boring.
Issues Per Year: I am very active outside from spring through fall. (Mostly hiking and hunting for MOTHS.) But I live in Minnesota, where SAD SEASON (no bugs!) runs from November-March. That’s where the magazine comes in: I plan to publish one issue per month in the winter months.
Issue Basics: Each issue will have four poets, with two prose poems each.
Payment: I think it’s important to pay authors, even though I don’t have a lot of money to do so. (I run this from my couch, so it’s not exactly the Paris Review and their bazillion-dollar soirees.) So here’s the deal: I’ll pay each author $10 for their two poems/pieces. At four authors per month, that’s $40/month. I can afford that.
To get paid, you must provide an email address for Paypal; if you want to forgo the payment, I’ll transfer the $10 to a slush fund to use on the magazine or to pay our authors.
Submit to prosepoemsmagazine AT gmail.com
We will never charge for submissions because that is incredibly lame. If anyone wants to donate to help fund the magazine or its authors, you can do so here. (I will not use any of the money for my personal use; it will only go to funding the magazine or special projects–broadsides, perhaps–or to our authors.)
Editor’s Note: As part of our commitment to paying our authors, I’ve turned my hobby of visiting garage sales, flea markets, and antique stores into a way to fund-raise for the magazine. All proceeds will go to paying our authors or to the magazine (ads, and possibly broadsides).