Submissions are open through May 15. Submission form link is at the bottom!
delicate emissions poetry zine is a very specific kind of publication. We have a strong online presence, and our poets will always see their poems in our online issues as well as some social media posts. But we exist in physical form, too, and that form is as a brochure. Right now, the brochure is eight panels, three to four of which are dedicated to text other than poems (the cover, the bios, the masthead/colophon). Due to our format, we can generally only accept between seven and nine poems per issue.
So your poems need to fit this format for us to consider.
Some people write long poems, prose poems (Dusti is a prose-poem lover and writer!), poems in shape that are dependent upon having a larger page on which to live. Please don’t send us those poems. We can’t consider them. There are hundreds — thousands? — of publications that can give those poems a home! We are not one of them. Check ChillSubs!
Here’s what to do:
- Look for our submissions to open. We’ve always used Google Forms for ease. Generally, we open submissions in January, April, July, and October. Sometimes life takes over and we have to play with the dates. They open for about a month, and submitters are generally notified within two weeks of the closing date.
- Follow the prompts on the submission form.
- Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please notify us by email right away if you need to withdraw a piece!
- You may submit up to THREE POEMS IN ONE DOCUMENT. Please do not try submitting four or five poems by completing the form twice. All poems should be in one document, with a page break between each poem.
- Poems must be in .docx format, in a 12 point standard font, single spaced. (This is a change from the past — PDFs were being too persnickety to maintain the integrity of the poem on our end.)
- Poems must be 15 or fewer lines, including spaces between stanzas.
- Poems with long lines, most prose poems, and most poems depending upon shape or specialized spacing are not appropriate for delicate emissions.
- Your bio should be brief. You can be serious or funny or mysterious, but you can’t be long-winded. Or even medium-winded. We reserve the right to edit for length if necessary. Please note that we will not include links to Substack publications or the social platform X. We’re not excluding poets who use those platforms, as we know it can be tricky to leave behind a big following, but we will not promote those platforms at delicate emissions poetry zine.
- Take a few minutes to read what we’ve published! It’s all on our LinkTree. (This is a good idea before submitting to pretty much anywhere!)
- If you have any issues submitting, email us at DelicateEmissions@gmail.com. We want to help you!
Publication Terms
When you agree to let delicate emissions poetry zine publish your submitted poem(s), here is what you are agreeing to:
- That delicate emissions poetry zine has First Publication Rights. You attest this particular work has not been published in whole or in part anywhere outside your own personal social media and/or blog.
- That delicate emissions poetry zine retains the right to anthologize, maintain, and promote your work as it was published in our magazine so long as that is practical for us to do so. You’re still free to do what you will with your work.
- That delicate emissions poetry zine has the right to publish the accepted work in our physical format as well as online, and to promote it in whatever online and in-person forums we are leveraging at that time. Our goal is to get people to read your poems in our zine and become interested enough to seek out your other work. However, time and energy are finite, the world is in constant upheaval, and we can only promise to do our best in promoting your work.
- If your work that we published first is later accepted into or included in a collection or anthology, or reprinted elsewhere, we ask that you credit delicate emissions poetry zine as the place in which it first appeared.
- Payment is one copy of the zine (two if we’re having a great month), mailed to an address you provide. We are working to become a paying market.
Our official policy on AI-generated work, plagiarism, and bad behavior
You can write your own poems; we believe in you! And you can be a decent person!
delicate emissions poetry zine aims to only publish original poetry written without the use of generative AI including, but not limited to, ChatGPT. If we discover and confirm during the reading process any plagiarism (defined here as passing someone else’s work or ideas as one’s own) or generative AI, we will discard and reject the submission.
If we discover proof after publication, we will move to remove the work from all our online platforms where it appears.
Integrity here means that poets are submitting their own work, and also that we as a publication are not participating in gossip or the public tearing down of other writers.
All opinions expressed in the poems we feature belong to the poet and should not be assumed to be the opinions of the editorial staff of delicate emissions poetry zine. All opinions expressed by our editorial staff are our own and should not be assumed to be the opinions of our featured artists and writers.
That said, delicate emissions will not tolerate abusive behavior, violence, or dishonesty. We reserve the right to withdraw an acceptance for any reason.
Submissions are open for delicate emissions #18
Click on the photo above for the Google Submission Form (specific to this issue).
We’re accepting submissions from 15 April to 15 May 2026. Poets will be notified of decisions by 31 May 2026. Publication is expected around 22 June 2026 but may vary.
delicate emissions poetry zine 