CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

SHOW US YOUR PAPERS 

Anthology

Publisher Main Street Rag

Wendy Scott Paff, Daniela Buccilli, and Cherise A. Pollard, Editors

Show me your driver’s license and registration . . . Your student ID is not valid identification . . . I can only close that account with a death certificate . . . I have no record you’re registered to vote . . . Show me your Green Card . . . Do you have a Certificate of Divorce? . . . Don’t forget your passport . . . We’ll need your medical history, x-rays, test results . . . Do you have your receipt, rain check, tax returns, birth certificate, summons, blueprints, report card, hall pass, the deed, your fishing license, prescription, proof of income, occupancy permit, Military ID, insurance card, the ruling, your term paper, DNA results, boarding pass, union card, credit card? . . . Keep your hands where I can see them.

We are “permitted,” by the right paperwork, or so we imagine. Identity theft, fraud, a bad marriage, and a host of other mishaps can complicate the link between our “identity” and our “papers.” Sometimes no amount of paperwork “permits” a life, as when a black man is shot by police before he can reach into his wallet, or Latinx immigrants are jailed or deported because new administration changes the “rules.”

Send us your poems about writs and wills. About medical charts and shift logs, foreclosures and permits. About being identified, misidentified, lost. About identity theft, deportation, detention. About being documented. About not being safe even with the right documents.

To be published by Main Street Rag Press.

· Submit up to 3 poems.

· Maximum line length per poem is 64 lines 

· Submissions open December 1, 2018

· Submissions close August 31, 2019

· Submission fee: $3.00

· Simultaneous submissions welcome. If your work is accepted elsewhere, please withdraw your submission using Submittable. If you are only withdrawing part of your work, add a note to your submission.

· Please include your entire submission in one file. 

· Put your bio on the first page of your submission.

· Put your name and contact information on each subsequent page.

· One poem per page

· Acceptable file formats are .doc, .docx, .rtf, and pdf. 

· Previously published poems are welcome if the poet owns the rights.

· All submissions must be in English, no translations.

· Authors accepted from outside the United States will receive printable PDF's only

(Submittable: If you are unable to use our submissions manager, check the anthology website: http:showusyourpapers.info.)