Untitled by Ayla Bayli
“This is one of those pieces that I wrote more for me than anyone else and it felt private and also very out of context and stupid at a time. Now I feel like it can fit in here.”
Rhymes by Ayla Bayli
“This was a thought exercise I found too funny to delete and now it is poetry I guess.”
My Counselor Tells Me That “Suicidal Ideation is Normal”, (part) Indigenous & Ambulance by Ron Riekki
*TW: mentions of suicide
“I submitted this poetry to a literary journal in North Carolina. They rejected them. I never submitted them again, so they have been lying there asleep in my computer. I wanted to write about subject matter that was important to me, but I think a fast, generic rejection encourages a poem to die on the vine. I polished them off, gave them a bath, and now I'm tucking them into your bed. If they have a nightmare about North Carolina in the middle of the night, just get them some milk and they'll be OK.”
Basho Williams by Marc Isaac Potter
“I rejected BASHO After months and months of work because it was not fulfilling the purpose I had for it. This piece was supposed to be about developmentalist abilities and also have some humor about Zen especially as famous and teacher named vasho. I really have a heart for people with developmental disabilities I have a learning disability but nothing nearly as severe as a developmental disability. I'm voicing these words onto the page Because sometimes my hands are so arthritic it's hard to type. Did I say difficult to type. Also, my use of bold Italics and colors is forbidden in publishing ...”
Flames by Abby Moeller
“I often trash this piece because it was an early piece of mine and not in my typical mode of voice, but I think it’s important to still use and acknowledge it because it shows where I came from as a writer compared to now. Moreso, this poem talks about a very common thing, fire, in a strange way and I don’t feel as it lives up to other works on the topic.”
Reason’s Sabbatical by Amy Marques
“I love this piece, but I think it’s one of those beloved sweaters you can’t quite throw out or give away even though it’s hard to find a good occasion to wear it because it’s always a little too warm or a little too thin for most places.”
For My Mother, Who Begs Me Not to Enquire Further by Alexander Lazarus Wolff
“This piece was much more successful than "Ennui." Four editors mentioned they liked the piece. But I trashed it because I felt this poem could not stand on its own (as it is not meant to stand on its own— I am including it in an honors thesis). And, of course, this is not even to mention the self-consciousness this piece engenders in me because of its strident, confessional tone.”
Ennui by Alexander Lazarus Wolff
“I considered this piece a failure after an editor called my writing "maudlin, sentimental, and choked by a syrupy romanticism." While it took me a while to work on this piece, it did not succeed as well as I anticipated. The piece is highly narrative, personal, and confessional. It's hard for me to own up to it because of the negative feedback I received. Ultimately, I trashed it because I thought it had an immature and undeveloped voice.”
Wrong Passenger by Bryan Vale
“Even at such a short length (originally "Wrong Passenger" was 250 words long), I felt like this story's ending landed with a thud. I sent it out anyway, but after it got rejected by a couple of flash fiction journals, I decided to shelve it for a while. Recently I reopened the doc, read it over, and felt the story was actually pretty good. The language was precise, and the action was clear despite the short length. By a chance of formatting, the last 14 words of the story didn't show up on page 1 — and suddenly I realized cutting those last 14 words altogether gave the ending a lot more punch. The classic rule of editing: usually, shorter is better!”
Broken Shrine by Divisha Chaudhry
TW* sexual violence
“I actually wrote this poem as a catharsis of sorts and later submitted it to a zine as well. After the rejection, I felt that the parallels I made with a dismantled shrine and an abused body might have been too generic and could have been framed better. Either way, I tried to reflect back and reshape the piece but was unable to omit anything which is why it has been lost in my ms word app until now.”
Meat-Eating Orchids Forgive No One by Alorah Welti
“This was the first flash fiction piece I really wrote (and finished). I wrote it after I got COVID and became fascinated by Kurt Cobain. I initially wrote it based on a writing prompt on Twitter—something about the end of the world and a gas pump attendant. I didn’t share it with anyone in my life but I quietly submitted it to a few places. All rejections. I still like it, but it may be too strange, or too real, I don’t know. Do what you will.”
June Twenty-Sixth, Twenty Twenty-Two by Alorah Welti
“I wrote this stream of consciousness just after Roe v. Wade was overturned and I started working full time as a camp counselor to children 3-5 years old. I didn’t re-read it for 5 months. Looking at it now, it is collaged in such a way that accurately shows how I was feeling at the time, but it might be too unrelatable to other people, maybe only a treasure to myself alone.”
Submit by Alorah Welti
“I trashed this piece because it isn’t in my normal style. It’s so literal, so cut and dry, and I thought maybe people would relate to it since there are so many writers in the grind of submitting, but no one has accepted it or really liked it. I do enjoy the staccato of reading it out loud though, so I haven’t given up on it completely.”
Tropical Rainforest by Raisa Reina
“I tried to be nostalgic. In touch with the past and nature. I didn’t love this. It felt like pandering to someone else’s view of my own home. It got rejected somewhere less than 24 hours after I submitted. How can you reject what my home looks like? Writing brings joy. I can’t imagine giving it up. I hate this rollercoaster and I want to get off this ride but I know as soon as I do I’ll just end up buying another ticket again.”
Help I Think I’ve Died by Raisa Reina
“This has been sitting in my drafts for a few months now. I can’t bring myself to edit it but I love it too much to delete it. You can say I probably don’t even have the will to do anything with it. Sometimes I feel like I have trouble communicating so when the words leave my brain they are incorrect on the page and when you read them you don’t get the full scope of what I meant to say. That’s a whole long rambling way of saying, I’ve gotten too many rejections from other pieces, this one just felt like using someone else’s voice in order to gain approval except what I mean to say is I miss being passionate about things and this is my voice and I hate that it seems like I have to share only pain to be accepted and still end up being rejected. Many writers say they experienced tons of rejection before they made it so it seems like leaving the industry isn’t an option for me either.”
bargaining by Latifa Sekarini
“The poem I'm submitting is titled ‘bargaining’ and it's been sitting in my Google docs after multiple rounds of edits. It was the first piece I wrote after another one of my poems won a big prize, and I scrapped this piece because I felt like I might never write anything prize-worthy ever again.”
Garage Sailing by Sam Rebelein
“I wrote this one afternoon when my mom and I were having a garage sale this summer. I just found it suddenly ridiculous that we have all these fears about shootings in public places, yet here we are, sitting on our driveway. What makes us think we're safe here? Once I started writing, the voice of the it took over. It was a blast to follow around, but it never told me the exact significance of Albert. I could tell Albert meant something to it, but it didn't want to talk about its past to me any more than it absolutely had to. I think that's fine, and I don't want to pry, but I also worry that makes the story not work in some way? I love that it seems to save Albert, and finds a companion, and drives off into the wind with them, but something doesn't quite click between all those pieces. I think. That said, any more fussing with this story would ruin its magic, so I'm just going to leave it here.”
Migration by Mason Martinez
“Migration is a piece that I truly believed in when I initially wrote it. I felt captivated by the environment. I dived deep into Osprey research and now I'm obsessed with them. However, after four rewrites and what feels to be an endless amount of rejections, I feel weighed down by this piece and if it doesn't make it here, I think it's time to let it go.”
The Torment of Life by Sathya Wistara
“I sometimes imagine myself reading my poems before a raised platform upon which stand my favourite dead authors. Sometimes they approve of my poems. At others, they either laugh or frown. I vaguely remember Nakahara Chūya leaving the room right after I finished reading this one.”
I Leave My Body & A woman Culture-made by Adora Williams
“They were written recently, during my holidays to recover from depression. The time wasn’t right to put word to paper, and I usually write full manuscripts, with a concept in mind. For those, I didn’t have that. That’s why they’re homeless now and I don’t like that idea.”