Slush Piles and Slush Puppies – a meditation on Blue Raspberry

Did you have a Dairy Mart in your town growing up? They had that Slush Puppy machine which produced an ice cold beverage with a consistency somewhere between a Slurpee and a straight up carnival shaved ice. It was oh-so-good – the blue raspberry! What the hell kind of made-up flavor is that! So tasty, and so incomprehensible where it came from and what it does to your mouth – yet still we crave it. Are even addicted to it, perhaps. Kinda reminds me of our economy.

…And slush piles: those cheap magnets for our work we simply can’t avoid the gravity of – and gladly – for 99.9% of the time there’s no fee and no 12-page long instruction sheet on how to send it in right otherwise, YOU’RE OUT!

I am happy to report the following presses with open submissions periods. Please read their guidelines as some require a query first, or an accompanying reading fee. May your mouths turn brilliant blue and your work find its way into the printed world before it ends (the world, I mean)!

Poetry

Pecan Grove Press
Mayapple Press - high literature only! (say it with a British accent then send it off)
Estruscan Press (say it in Latin, then send it off!)
BkMk Press – back in open reading mode!
Black Ocean Books

Fiction

Soft Skull Press – query first.
Ocean Publishing – query first.
Mayapple Press - high literature only! (say it with a British accent then send it off)
BkMk Press – back in open reading mode!
Black Ocean Books

Tags: Contests, fiction, fiction contests, open reading period, open submissions, poetry, poetry contests, slush, writing, writing contests