call for submissions
MUSCLE MEMORY
Reading period open June 15-August 15
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What does the body say when you slow down to hear it? What memory living among the taut red braids of your muscles has come forth? For most, this year has shifted our inner tectonics. Characterized by stillness, distance, violence, and loss, the body and its aches make themselves known. For this issue, we are asking: what sings from skin, what rattles behind that smooth cup of knee-bone, what urgent instrument sounds from the gut? MUSCLE MEMORY is about muscles, and memory, and everything in between.
With over 600 muscles in the body, this theme may take many forms and sites: tongue, hamstring, goosebump. A knee-jerk reaction—literal or symbolic. Habit, automatic, outside the reach of rational thought. It could be a memory stored in the body, moments that resist linearity—something tender inscribed in the hip or long lodged behind that big muscle in your chest. A memory sparked by scent or song or the muscles used to smell and speak. A memory about muscle: the way a forearm flexed in certain light, or seeing slick-muscled seals in the dark. Maybe you hold memories passed through the muscles, generation to generation, the body's heirloom. Or perhaps the muscle is the creative work itself—the way the poems contract and release. Wherever it resides, we hope you'll share it with us: the muscle of a story & what it remembers. We are particularly interested in experimental and hybrid work across all mediums: send us your fragments, your experiments, your photographs, your drawn, your multi, your undefinable, your sound, your memory, your written, your stuff of resistance. |
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SUBMISSION GUIDELINEs
Because we encourage cross-genre and undefinable work, we offer two ways of measuring the parameters of your piece: by word count, and alternatively, by the time needed to engage with your piece. We accept submissions that (loosely) fit the parameters below or measures to about 15 minutes of reading/listening/viewing/etc.
Please email your submission to kaleidoscopedmag@gmail.com. In the subject line, include your name and the title of your work. In the body of the email, include your submission file (pdf, doc, or jpg preferred, other formats accepted if necessary to your piece), a brief bio, and an answer to the following question: what does it mean to "be kaleidoscoped”? Please note that each of these elements is required for your submission to be considered.
- 1-5 poems up to ten pages in length, and/or up to 3000 words of prose (in a single work or combined total).
- Visual, video, sound, interactive & multi-media: up to 3 works per submission, or up to 15 minutes combined time of engagement.
Please email your submission to kaleidoscopedmag@gmail.com. In the subject line, include your name and the title of your work. In the body of the email, include your submission file (pdf, doc, or jpg preferred, other formats accepted if necessary to your piece), a brief bio, and an answer to the following question: what does it mean to "be kaleidoscoped”? Please note that each of these elements is required for your submission to be considered.
To keep this publication free & accessible, there is no submission fee for sending in your work. However, please consider an optional donation of $3-$10 to the local San Diego organization Native Like Water, whose aim is to "prepare Indigenous youth and adult volunteers in science, outdoor education, conservation, composition, wellness, and cultural self-exploration." Find more information about this organization at https://www.nativelikewater.org.
*If funding is secured, each contributor selected for our second issue will be compensated a small sum.
UC San Diego is situated on the unceded territory of the Kumeyaay nation.
*If funding is secured, each contributor selected for our second issue will be compensated a small sum.
UC San Diego is situated on the unceded territory of the Kumeyaay nation.
k e e p i n t o u c h
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