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Tinderbox Poetry Journal @tinderboxpoetry.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

We are thrilled that Vol. 10 Is. 2 of Tinderbox is out in the world! Read all the wonderful poems at tinderboxpoetry.com.

tinderboxpoetry.com

Tinderbox Poetry Journal

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Tinderbox Poetry Journal @tinderboxpoetry.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

Tomorrow, Aug. 1, we’ll open submissions for our annual Brett Elizabeth-Jenkins Poetry Prize! The submission fee is $15 USD for up to 5 poems. The fees from this annual contest help us keep the proverbial light on. More details to come. Send us poems here: shorturl.at/aojAD

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Tinderbox Poetry Journal Submission Manager

Tinderbox Poetry Journal Submission Manager Powered By Submittable - Accept and Curate Digital Content

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Tinderbox Poetry Journal @tinderboxpoetry.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

We are so excited to announce our ✨new issue✨ Tinderbox 10.1! Read all the new poems (and new poetry book reviews) right here: tinderboxpoetry.com?utm_source=s...

tinderboxpoetry.com

Tinderbox Poetry Journal

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Tinderbox Poetry Journal @tinderboxpoetry.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

Tinderbox Poetry Journal is looking for a new Social Media Editor! This is a volunteer position that's responsible for promoting new issues of Tinderbox on Bluesky and Instagram. If graphic design really is your passion, please email our current Social Media editor, Jacqui, at zeng.jacqui@gmail.com

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Tinderbox Poetry Journal @tinderboxpoetry.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

We are still looking for a new Social Media Editor! If you're interesting in this volunteer position, please send us a chat #onhere or DM us on Instagram @ tinderboxpoetryjournal.

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Tinderbox Poetry Journal @tinderboxpoetry.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

Do you love reading Tinderbox? Do you want to help us reach more readers? We are looking for a new Social Media Editor! Please DM us #onhere if you are interested.

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Tinderbox Poetry Journal @tinderboxpoetry.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

Our 2024 Contest Issue is Live! 🎉 We are so excited to share all of these poems with you. 2024's Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Prize Winner is "I Want" by Nancy Lynée Woo 2024's Maja Gama Editor's Prize Winner is "When We Look at Ancient Mesopotamian Myth" by Issam Zineh @izineh.bsky.social

tinderboxpoetry.com

Tinderbox Poetry Journal

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Alycia Pirmohamed @alycia.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

yesterday at @scotbpocwriters.bsky.social we shared space & read together for #ReadPalestineWeek here’s our reading list, some of which are free for download via P4P at the link below we left with an action of resistance & invite you to do the same 🍉 publishersforpalestine.org/2024/11/29/f...

Black background with white and red text. A green band down the right side.
SBWN Reading List #ReadPalestineWeek
Swipe for what we read in our sharing space this week
read & resist together

Why so few women on the street at night, Sarona Abuaker
The Moon That Turns You Back, Hala Alyan
Recognising the Stranger, Isabella Hammad
Sambac Beneath Unlikely Skies, Heba Hyek
[...], Fady Joudah
And most of all I would miss, Mira Mattar
Ash & Air, Nadine Murtaja (translated. Fatema Alhashemi)
Namesake, N.S. Nuseibeh
The Tiny Journalist, Naomi Shihab Nye
Writing the Camp, Yousif M Qasmiyeh
Palestinian Walks, Raja Shehadeh
Forest of Noise, Mosab Abu Toha
Blood Orange, Yaffa

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Alycia Pirmohamed @alycia.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

join us at @scotbpocwriters.bsky.social for an hour of reading together online and sharing space during #ReadPalestineWeek 🇵🇸🖤 on 3rd december, we’ll read some of Publishers4Palestine free resources and books + other work register for our solidarity lunch hour here docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

A green graphic with the text: SBWN Solidarity Space #ReadPalestineWeek
3rd December, 2024
12pm to 1pm
online
read & resist together
open to everyone: Black people, people of colour, and white allies

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ArabLit & ArabLit Quarterly @arablit.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

Throughout #ReadPalestineWeek, there are a selection of free ebooks available through the publishersforpalestine.org website, as well as events & actions you can take now.

Please visit publishersforpalestine.org for the complete list of free books.

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Puff the Magic Hater @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

Around this time every year, I share a list of ways to support Native people. From supporting Indigenous people seeking abortion care to defending Native voting rights and keeping Native families together, here are some causes worth supporting. 🧵

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ArabLit & ArabLit Quarterly @arablit.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

🎁This year, we have put together a Holiday Giving list. It includes mutual-aid suggestions and gifts you can buy where 100% of profits go to Palestine, Sudan, Lebanon: books, art, pottery, more. Thanks to everyone who helped w/the list. arablit.org/2024/11/28/h...

arablit.org

Holiday Giving, 2024

By ArabLit Staff, with the wider community We have, in the past, run holiday-gift listicles. This year, we focus on gifts where profits go to community support, mutual aid, and on-the-ground assist…

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Sarah Carey @saycarey1.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Writing reviews is hard, but so incredibly rewarding when even one person reads the review & buys the book or gains more insights into it. I've written a few this year for @tinderboxpoetry.bsky.social. My latest on R.L. Farr @rfarr.bsky.social 's Become Echo from Atmosphere Press. bit.ly/3XPb6Li

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Review of Become Echo by R. L. Farr | Tinderbox Poetry Journal

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Glass Poetry Press @glasspoetry.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

"Bodies and Language Always Fail" by Donna Vorreyer (@djvorreyer.bsky.social), from Tinderbox Poetry Journal (@tinderboxpoetry.bsky.social) tinderboxpoetry.com/bodies-and-l...

Donna Vorreyer
Bodies and Language Always Fail
I.

My father worked to erase the South Side from his salesman’s tongue, gently but insistently corrected my brothers and I as we grew. The thud of the hard D replaced by the buzzing digraph of TH:

Them not dem

Those not dose

The hard AH tilting the mouth sideways turned to a softer rounder AW:

Chi-CAW-go, not Chi-CAH-go

In 1991, Saturday Night Live aired the first iteration of “Da Bears” sketch. I watched Mike Myers, Chris Farley, guest host Joe Mantegna don that accent as a punchline. My father had known thirty years earlier what they now mined for laughs—the accent was ripe for mocking.

II.

I pledge allegiance to my musculature, my disjointed state of disrepair. My blood flag. My nerve anthem. Isthmus of nose. Archipelago of age spots. Hail the cracked joints, the bone spurs, the torn tendons. The blurred eye, its floating speck of storm. Lakes of bruises. Rivers of night sweat. Body I hate I need I shun I nurture I hate I pamper I hate I need I need I hate I need I need to love more. Body that carries me. Body of multitudes. Body of declarations. Body dependent and independent. One nation under damaged skin. Sweet land of flab and accidents—land that I inhabit. Of thee, I sing.

III.

degenerative:

grated gear //vintage grievant//riveted vine//enraged gradient

tender edge//tiered revenge//inert and raving dearie

renegade train//reneged range

envied grave

IV.

On my last night with my father, death loitered in the corner like a comedian in a cheap suit, mocking us, dragging out the punchline. Wrapped in my dad’s favorite Chicago Bears blanket, I slumped beside his bed, close enough to hold his hand, to watch his breath catch and fall. On the television, Pitch Perfect played on low volume, and I watched the mouths of the singers press into bilabial stops, buzz into digraphs, circle into rounded o’s. There was nothing left to say. What was waiting had erased all language from both of our tongues.

Donna Vorreyer is the author of To Everything There Is (2020), Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story (2016) and A House of Many Windows (2013), all from Sundress Publications. Her poetry, fiction, and essay work have appeared in Ploughshares, Cherry Tree, Poet Lore, Salamander, Harpur Palate, Booth, and many others. She lives and creates in the Chicago area and hosts the monthly online reading series A Hundred Pitchers of Honey.

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Tinderbox Poetry Journal @tinderboxpoetry.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

Hello Bluesky! We are finally, officially, leaving Twitter and plan to be more active on our Bluesky account. If you've been published in one of our past issues, please let us know you're here!

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Tinderbox Poetry Journal @tinderboxpoetry.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

Hello Bluesky! We are finally, officially, leaving Twitter and plan to be more active on our Bluesky account. If you've been published in one of our past issues, please let us know you're here!

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Dr. Han VanderHart @hanvanderhart.bsky.social · 01/04/2024

We are at 71% for @riverriverbooks.bsky.social Kickstarter on our first day and…! Dang. Feeling so held by community, and wanting to support other presses who need it right now. Please share those calls with me and RRB and @amorak.bsky.social so we can boost 🌊🌊

kickstarter.com

River River Books: Poetry Distribution

Help us ship poetry to independent bookstores, libraries, and readers.

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Tinderbox Poetry Journal @tinderboxpoetry.bsky.social · 09/03/2024

🎉 Congrats to Nick Martino, one of our past contributors, on winning the Alice James Editor's Choice Prize! Alice James Books will publish his collection, Scrap Book, in June 2026. You can read his poem "Honeysuckle" right here: tinderboxpoetry.com/honeysuckle

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Tinderbox Poetry Journal @tinderboxpoetry.bsky.social · 22/02/2024

2024 marks the 10th anniversary of Tinderbox’s founding. As one of the longest running journals on the internet, a cash reserve would allow us to weather seasons of activity and rest while continuing to support our free subs weeks. We have a $1,000 matching donation, which means your dollars double!

rb.gy

Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Reserve Operating Fund., organized by Lauren Carlson

I'm Lauren, and I serve as editor for Tinderbox Poetry Journal, an on… Lauren Carlson needs your support for Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Reserve Operating Fund.

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Tinderbox Poetry Journal @tinderboxpoetry.bsky.social · 10/01/2024

We are accepting book review submissions! Is there a poetry collection that you want to uplift? We want to hear about it! Especially if it's your first time reviewing a book! Pitch us a review at our email: tinderboxreviews@gmail.com. Or submit a complete review at our Submittable: rb.gy/jhj2hc

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Tinderbox Poetry Journal @tinderboxpoetry.bsky.social · 21/12/2023

We're so excited to announce the contest winners for 2023! 1st Place, selected by Paul Hlava Ceballos, is Claire Pinkston's "Nocturne." This year's Majda Gama Editor's Prize winner is linda harris dolan's "for I have genetic heart disease. (or: unsaid things.)(or: to my husband, on my death.)"

text reads: BEJ Contest Winners: 1st Place, selected by Paul Hlava Ceballos: Claire Pinkston for Nocturne Honorable Mentions (in no particular order): Erica Reid's Shucking, Freesia McKee's A student asks can we write about abortion in this class, and Gabriel Dunsmith’s Circumabulation

text reads: Majda Gama Editor's Prize Winner: linda harris dolan for I have genetic heart disease. (or: unsaid things.)(or: to my husband, on my death.)

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