iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Here is another sneak peek at a poem from our latest release by R. B. Simon, Bird, Bone, Blood. Check out the store page for even more poems from this collection. milkandcakepress.com/product/bird...

Image: Image of a creamy white background sprinkled with bright lights and starry glitter. Text: Christmas After verb: celebrate; 1. acknowledge (a significant or happy day or event) with a social gathering or enjoyable activity. 2. perform (a religious ceremony) publicly and duly, in particular officiate at (the Eucharist). 3. honor or praise publicly. Lead-limbed, partner and I rise slow from the snag of dream-soaked blankets. Sanded eyes lift from the floor, spines bent as we make our way downstairs to greet our living teenager, perform ceremonies of endings, and beginnings. We celebrate the holiday, a sliver under the fingernail. In the perpetual twilight of tree lights, faces look wan, illuminated, the flat sag of both our bellies almost imperceptible. Friends filter through the house, offer chocolates, hot dishes, endeavors to comfort. From the corner, I watch my beloved grieve alone amid a semi-circle of blessed ignorants, nativity in negative. Of me, they ask nothing, offer nothing. In a tornado of silence, I descend further into reverberations of another year’s end, two years prior, my own womb aching empty. A hollow chill nestles between flesh and fascia, belies the bright lights. It does not matter who laments more. Together, we are still alone in our yearn and mourn, sit soundless facing the artificial spruce, looming symbol of new birth. We exchange presents, begin the journey towards the coming new year, a holy communion of grief.

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Here is a look at a poem from our most recently released collection, Bird, Bone, Blood by R. B. Simon! 🕊️🦴🩸 milkandcakepress.com/product/bird...

Image: A photo of a wide landscape of fields and trees from the view of a high-up rocky lookout. The sky is blue with pink and orange clouds. Through the clouds some stars can be seen. Text: Magic & the Moniker before my name, I was a live thing with no way to be called away from myself. a promise, unmouthed, brown as uncarved oak and as feral, unscarred, loose as a winging crane. I was a live thing, before my name. once named, I am called, beckoned into blackness, constructed, conquered. the old ones believed in the magic of a name, to know one was to command the soul but the old ones are fewer, stripped away from us, vanquished across history’s turbid ocean and we have forgotten the art of protecting what is most elemental of ourselves before my name, I was a live thing. now, I am unfanned ember interred in ash, cooling back into earth, dust to dust. -R. B. Simon

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Our newest release, this poetic memoir chronicles R. B. Simon’s life as a daughter, wife, mother, and survivor of addiction and abuse.

Image: An illustration of a bird with black, white, orange, and blue coloring, standing on a branch holding a slightly bloody bone in its beak all on a creamy white, slightly crumpled paper background. Text: Bird, Bone, Blood R. B. Simon.

Image: A photo of the poet, a Black woman smiling and leaning against a wall in a white shirt. Text: R. B. Simon (1971–2025) was a celebrated queer, Black, disabled writer, visual artist, and Managing Editor at Harbor Editions. Based in Madison, Wisconsin, her award-winning poetry found homes in numerous prominent publications. Her legacy includes her chapbook The Good Truth (Finishing Line Press, 2021) and her debut collection Not Just the Fire (Cornerstone Press, 2023). Days before her unexpected passing, she completed the final edits to this collection. “The best thing I can leave this world and my children is my poetry.”

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Another sneak peek of a poem from our most recently released collection, Quickfall, by Malisa Garlieb. Check out the store page to read even more poems from this collection. On sale now! @malisagarlieb.bsky.social milkandcakepress.com/product/quic...

Image: A photo of a large mirror outside, leaning against an ivy covered wall. Text: Keen You think you know all the sounds your body emits when crying. I’ve been around the block. On a floor/bed/plane. At the mirror. I’m a natural, not that it’s theater, but even the chaplain wept with me when my husband died at the ER check-in. Four months in, my ducts have dried and the case of tissues shelters below a desk. Yet sounds erupt from this beast body: abrupt coyote bark, hag’s cackle, kicked cat. I wonder what the neighbors hear, what wretched numen rakes my chest. Malisa Garlieb

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Here is a look at a poem from our most recently released collection, Quickfall, by Malisa Garlieb. On sale now! 🛤️💍📖🫐 @malisagarlieb.bsky.social milkandcakepress.com/product/quic...

Image: A photo of clusters of blueberries still on the bush, occupying the left side of the image. More bushes run in a line, fading into the background. Text: I. I am wasteful. A slut for blueberries wandering mazes of bluecrop bluejay, patriot, rabbiteye. I grab blue fistfuls and half the berries roll to rot underfoot. High on sugared sunshine and slap-tart sweet. II. I gape at the man in the third row who doesn’t move on- one highbush fills his pail and he lifts branches to reveal what’s low and hidden. Each discrete berry’s a prayer bead and he’s devoted. Later, with even breathing he holds my hand in sleep. Malisa Garlieb

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Quickfall by Malisa Garlieb on sale now! The poems of Quickfall document a love story, the death of a spouse, and the widow’s grief. @malisagarlieb.bsky.social Cover by Jonathon Scharf

Image: On a black background, a drawing with a carved appearance of train tracks running left to right across the bottom of the page. Alongside them fruit trees and other plants, with the waxing crescent moon in the sky. Text: Quickfall Malisa Garlieb

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

Another peek at a poem from our latest release, “Dust Rites” by Alison Strub. Check out the store page to read even more poems from this collection! 🏏📚🔴 milkandcakepress.com/product/dust...

Image: A photo of a light-color wood grain running vertically. Text: Lawrence D’Souza informs me about cricket. There were the brothers: Humberto, Carlito and Joachim—tall, upright, elegant and very fine cricketers. They freely and aggressively played strokes all round the wickets with graceand ease. There was Anthony S. de Mello, described as the Grand Mogul of Sports—the doyen of sports. He converted the cricket Quadrangular Tournament of Bombay into a Pentangular Tournament by forming a Rest team that he himself captained. He was responsible for putting India on the Cricket Map of the World. Lawrence D’Souza himself was a fine cricketer, a dependable opening batsman and accurate spin bowler. He was an outstanding all rounder. Alison Strub

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

A sneak peak of a poem from our latest release, Dust Rites by Alison Strub! 🌬️ 🍂📖 On sale now! milkandcakepress.com/product/dust...

Image: A photo of dust being caught in a beam of light. On the top and bottom of the image there are torn bits of paper solid dark green, a torn map is layered at the top of the image and a image of a dried flower, also with torn edges is layered across the bottom. In the bottom right there is an old drawing of a chariot racer also with torn edges. Text:Giles J. Strub tells me that St. Louis has the largest Hooverville. I crave a history of dust as if it were a memory. The breeze is a shovelful of fine sand flung against the face. People caught in their own yards grope for the doorstep. Cars come to a standstill. No light can penetrate. The wood repurposed Or blown away.

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

On sale now, Dust Rites by Alison Strub! In this hybrid collection, the narrator wanders through her genealogical past, from the American Dust Bowl to Bandra, India, from Hoovervilles to the Arabian Sea. 🍃📖⚓️

Image: An etching of a galleon using black ink with white line work. Text: Dust Rites Alison Strub

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

Here’s another selection from our recently released, Dead of Winter IV anthology! 🐰📖🌷 Pick up your copy today! milkandcakepress.com/product/dead... (Yes, I know it’s April, but it’s been busy around here! -Miranda)

Image: Photo of pomegranates on a tree with a dark blue background. Text: Pomegranate tart, indulgent crimson crushed like a secret gem we could not keep- this secret comes at a price streets engulfed in snow, skies eclipsed by gray looming clouds sometimes in the silence the mournful harp sings with a faint moon sometimes our days stretch longer only to retreat under another spell Erin Jamieson

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

Last chance! Milk and Cake Press will close for submissions tomorrow, March 31st. Don’t miss your chance submit. We look forward to reading your work! 🌷📖 🌸 milkandcakepress.com/submissions/

Image: Photo of grass filled with blooming yellow and purple crocuses. Text: Tomorrow March 31st is the last day to submit your chap or manuscript length poetry collection to Milk & Cake Press! Check our website or Duotrope page for guidelines.

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

Dead of Winter IV is now on sale! 🌲✨📖 As this is an anthology, we won’t be able to feature all of our wonderful contributors, but here is the first selection of a handful of poems we hope will highlight this collection.

Image: Photo of a forest with trees in the background and a lush green bush dotted with a few bright leaves in the foreground. Text: Trees lose their leaves in winter fill instead with birds perched like early buds along black boughs, etched from a pink horizon, and like a second loss of leaves they peel from the crown shaken to the still air to come together, wheel as one in the turquoise sky with a whoosh of wing fade in the distance towards the dark pine wood. -Anne Marie Mac Darby-Beck

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

Don’t miss out! We look forward to reading your work. 🤓📚🌸 milkandcakepress.com/submissions/

Image: A photo of a light blue sky with a pink flower leaning into the center right of the image. Text: One Month Left!! Milk & Cake Press is open for chapbook and manuscript length poetry submissions till March 31! For more info visit our website or Duotrope. We accept submissions through Duosuma.

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

Happy Imbolc!🔥 Dead of Winter IV is now available for presale! This series brings the danger and dread of winter cold and the hope that comes with the return and renewal of spring, exploring the sublime and uncanny nature of this period. Cover by Jonathon Scharf Original photo by Alanna Zipp

Image: An edited black and white photo of human skulls and other bones stacked together from the catacombs of Paris. Text: Dead of Winter IV An Anthology

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

Milk & Cake Press is now open for submissions! We look forward to reading your work! 💐📚🤓 We will be open from February 1st-March 31st. Check out our website’s submission page or listing on Duosuma to discover what we are looking for and our guidelines. milkandcakepress.com/submissions/

Image: A photo of numerous white hydrangeas, hanging in chains down a wall and filling the floor. Foregrounded on a semi-transparent, light green rectangle is text reading: Milk & Cake Press is now open for poetry submissions! We are accepting manuscripts from February 1 - March 31. For more info visit our website or Duotrope. We accept submissions through Duosuma.

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

Check out another selection of poetry from our latest release, Folly, by Emma McVeigh. Visit our store to get your copy today! milkandcakepress.com/product/foll...

Text: After the civil war, westward expansion continued in the wake of manifest destiny. A divided country tries to establish itself as a global power. Seward leans in, seeing potential in that last frontier. A plaque on the statue of Seward reads a quote from him, spoken to Congress in 1852: “The Pacific Ocean, its shores its islands and the vast regions beyond will become the chief theater of events in the worlds (sic) great hereafter.” you stand on a dias the world your stage what better theatrics than that of empire? Image: Photo of a blue-gray sky with a large sandstone brick wall rising up across the right side of the image.

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

Here is a sneak peak at the poetry from our latest release, Folly by Emma McVeigh! Check it out! milkandcakepress.com/product/foll... Editor’s Note: Although these poems originally appear on two pages, I’ve combined them for this post. -Miranda Photo by author

Image: On a white crumbled paper background three sections of text are accompanied by a front-facing, black and white photo of a statue of a man, William Seward, standing one foot forward holding a book. Text: New Section *my friend once bought a stolen motorcycle didn’t know it wasn’t his to buy until he made a trip to the DMV* New Section The U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian’s website describes Russia’s early interest in Alaska as due to the region being “rich in natural resources and lightly inhabited” It is estimated that before Russian occupation, roughly 100,000 Indigenous people lived in Alaska. By the time of the sale a little over one hundred years later, that number was halved. I take pictures of him in clockwise circles. Everyone else is doing it, too. Passing by him in a circular choreography of indifference New Section agglutination means the word changes based on context river becomes head of river, mouth of river, yesterday’s river, bank, stream utterance, morpheme -Emma McVeigh

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

Check out our latest release. On sale now! In this hybrid chapbook, Emma McVeigh examines the purchase of Alaska, often referred to as Seward’s Folly, indigenous Alaskan language, and settler colonialism of the Pacific Northwest through a series of multiple poetic forms and photos.

Image: A black and white photo of a statue of a man (William H. Seward) standing, one foot forward wearing a greatcoat of 19th century period. Text: Emma McVeigh Folly

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 30/11/2025

Support a small business and ✅ check off your holiday shopping list all in one go! Everything in our shop is 50% off this week (that means our most expensive items are $12.50!) ✨🎁📚 milkandcakepress.com/shop/

Image: Photo of sparkly, gold fabric with a semi-transparent pink glitter photo framing the text. Text: Small Business Saturday Sale from Nov 29-Dec 6th 50% OFF Use code: holiday Pick up holiday gifts for family, friends, or yourself!

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 15/11/2025

Here is another look at a poem from our latest release Her Mouth a Palace of Lamps, by Yamini Pathak. On sale now! @ypathak.bsky.social milkandcakepress.com/product/pre-...

Image: Photo of an orange feather, through the thinner sections of it a landscape of water and orange and pink sunrise can be seen. Text: Travel Companions after Meena Alexander I dream of the flame tree the scarlet palash flowers that float outside my father’s window the one nested with a colony of parrots He and I fly to another red-beaked flock among the stone elephants of Hampi My father is alive and guides me through the Agra Fort across the Yamuna from the Taj he shows me how the summer winds were cooled by underground pipes of cold running water splashed on screens of fragrant khus It’s a feast of roses a marvel of engineering gifted to me so many caves and temples. crumbled rock and forests we have travelled the long spine of India sampled the curls of its dialects that make in our mouths, a soup of diphthongs curried in stained buses and flint-sparked trains that smell of burning coal his homecoming, a puffing labor of breath now he’s rocked to rest by a river I wake, cold feet, to a New Jersey winter

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

Check out one of the poems from our latest release, Her Mouth a Palace of Lamps, by Yamini Pathak. On sale now! @ypathak.bsky.social milkandcakepress.com/product/pre-...

Image: Picture of two incense sticks burning with orange, pink, and blue flame and some sparks flying off of them. All of this made more vivid with a black background. Text: Name the Night for Me Yamini, Goddess of Night wept upon separation from her twin Yama, Lord of Death. Her tears flowed to become the River Yamuna. Good fairies, my parents whispered a name for the first time into the shell of my newborn ear A potent spell that blew like nightingale breath through a baby’s body, I turned in that moment into a night sky shot with stray comets grew dark interiors, awakened forbidden cities of velvet silence My tears wash layers of sin from bodies carried like burdens until they ride on the black satin buffalo of my brother, Death I’m absent from the rose garden Look for me among the ghosts of night-blooming jasmine Listen they reveal my name to the shifting breeze

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 25/10/2025

@ypathak.bsky.social's meditation on what it means to be a woman in two cultures, connected to loved ones as a daughter, a wife, a mother. Weaving rich description of the domestic and the artistic seamlessly throughout, this is a book of warm, rich imagery and quiet, compelling reflection.

Image: Illustration of a white, intricately decorated sitar on a black background. Text: Her Mouth a Palace of Lamps Yamini Pathak

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 12/10/2025

We will being selling books this weekend at Lit Youngstown! Photo by: @kimjacobsbeck.bsky.social of the Youngstown State University campus from a previous visit.

Image: Photo of a tree with red and orange leaves, through a window with a large, brown, metal, beam crossing diagonally across it. Text: Milk & Cake Press will be at Lit Youngstown Oct 17-18 Come see us at the Book Fair!

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

We are open for submission to our anthology! 🎉 Check out our website to learn more. milkandcakepress.com/dead-of-wint...

Image: Close up photo of tree bark with a faint orange square on top to make the text more readable. Text: Milk & Cake Press is now open from Aug 1st - Aug 31th for submission for our biennial anthology Dead of Winter: Volume IV. We are looking for poems that deal with the mythological, the sublime, the mysteries of nature, the dark, or the uncanny of a long, cold winter. We aim to capture the feeling of the transition from the depths of winter toward spring. Submit 1-3 poems through Duosuma. There is no submission fee. For more details check our website or Duosuma listing.

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

Here’s another look at a poem from Cory Hutchinson-Reuss’ Triptych. Pick up your copy today! milkandcakepress.com/product/trip...

Image: Photo at floor height of an uneven wooden plank floor with a brown, plaster wall in the background. Text: [convalescence/cohabitations] the peonies spread their white tissues slowly paperwhite paperwhite a bouquet of cells thousands of nodes graph the maples miniscule birds waiting to burst & fall through austere geometries & machine noise who is inside me & who is in the trees? I’m part sutures & glue, part bracelets from childhood braided friendship bracelets in black, aqua, & pink threaded morning & evening the fledglings fell from oaks & rafters we fed them with a dropper now the sky pales & the maples return someone to me as I sit in the driveway a daughter runs through the woods she draws out the trees’ avian natures she chants the names, she catches the feathers she must’ve glued one to my chest, I remember a tiny egg nestled there like a burr now a low relief, a plume, small, fading, tender like a young one sealed in loneliness but spring means the return of sensation & no excuses the flowers chirp show their white teeth to all the passing neighbors

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

Check out this poem from our latest release, Triptych, by Cory Hutchinson-Reuss. milkandcakepress.com/product/trip...

Image: A photo of an orange, rusted metal plate with a raised diamond-shaped, criss-cross pattern. Text: I Know a Man who Swallowed the Sky for RW He lives behind prison walls. When he was younger, he lived in the interlock of law and anger, banned from the prison with trees, driven inside, under ceiling, into the solitary eye. / A woman gave him a few seeds that another man had written in seclusion and prayer. The man I know ate the seeds, recognized them as his own kernel splitting open, wound into window, through which years later I see what’s possible. Transformation’s daily grit and the rhythms of being human with others: he carries a book and notepad, a brown sack of fruit. He says I love you to the men in hospice. Some curse him. He works. He chews gum and reads. His heart fibrillates. He stitches a parachute of blues. The past’s pure grain despair, cell fire, and needle’s eye. From his stories I learn I was born in the hospital where his friends took healing. Missouri boot. The river’s gospel, sweltering. We talk about the mysterious bind between divinity and humanity. That some aches never subside. / Finally allowed into the prison yard, he rested his face against his first tree in years, sealed in himself an image, an embrace of the moment that grows in widening arcs. In lungs, the branches, the branches through fences, through fences cloud, hovering like a hermitage where a man writes seeds in the rain. I eat them, too. They fall to the roots, sprout according to each person’s need. They break into a blue firmament, a heaven so free and irrevocable it hurts.

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

Now on sale by Cory Hutchinson-Reuss! Triptych's central concern is care: for the incarcerated, for the body, for the natural world. The result is a meditation on the relationship of self, society, and nature, yet one that resists easy answers. Cover by: Jonathon Scharf

Black and white print of a redwood log cross-section with visible tree rings and cut marks.

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

Here is another excerpt from J.I. Kleinberg’s chapbook, Sleeping Lessons. Check it out- including some additional sneak peeks 👀 -in our store! milkandcakepress.com/product/slee...

Image: Up close photo of the folds of a jean-like fabric edited to be a emerald green color. Text. iii. She taught me how to sleep – unplug the islands from the sea and turn tree branches inside out like sweater sleeves around their leaves, the color tucked between your sheets, the islands tossed aloft like stars, then listen to the snoring trees and harmonize. -J.I. Kleinberg

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

Here is an excerpt from our latest release, J.I. Kleinberg’s Sleeping Lessons. Pick up your copy today!

Alt Text: Image: Close up photo of a metal keyhole through which a vibrant landscape of mountains, river, and sky are visible. Text: xv. She taught me how to sleep –horizon’s hand a subtle sweep, the dust of worry brushed aside, each eyebrow arch a secret door into a tiny jeweler’s shop where gem-hued words are faceted, and meteor light embroidered into quilts of sapphire dreams. -J.I. Kleinberg

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

Sleeping Lessons by J.I. Kleinberg out now! Essentially one long poem, it uses a gentle, musical language and familiar, comfortable descriptions to create a lovely mood. The quiet quality of this little book makes it a pleasure to read and provides a kind of lullaby for an overstimulated world.

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

We are open for submissions again! 🤓📚 Please consider sharing your work with us.

Image: A photo of a small cluster of white snowdrop flowers blooming through snowy ground. Text: Milk & Cake Press is now open for poetry submissions! We are accepting chapbook manuscripts from February 1 - March 31. For more info visit our website or Duotrope. We accept submissions through Duosuma.

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

If you're in Cincinnati/NKY, come hear some lovely poets and check out a cool indie bookstore!

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · 18/01/2025

Join us for a local reading at Indie NKY Bookstore’s brand new location!

Image: A photo of a wood panel wall. Text: Milk & Cake Reading Come join us for a reading featuring some of our local poets. Poets: Phoebe Reeves Kim Jacobs-Beck Bill Abbott Sara Moore Wagner Christen Kauffman & More Feb 1st 2-4 pm Indie NKY Bookstore 507 Sixth Ave Dayton KY 41074

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