News

Autumn 2025 in Print: Somnus Ambulare

The Rust & Moth Autumn 2025 issue is now available in print! These pages are restless, sleep-deprived, and sore from a hard day’s work. Keep faith alongside our authors as they punch their way through the back of the medicine cabinet.

With new poetry from Dan Alter, Rongfei Mu, Megan Peak, Vismai Rao, Lorrie Ness, Tallulah Howarth, Lao Rubert, Jeanne Julian, Olivia Jacobson, Annie Bolger, Mike Taylor, Wendy Wisner, Rachel Beachy, Jen Feroze, John Wojtowicz, Marc Alan Di Martino, Choiselle Joseph, Julie Benesh, Esther Lay, SM Stubbs, Callie S. Blackstone, Jennifer Randall Hotz, Jennifer L Freed, Prosper Ifeanyi, Laurie Koensgen, Oliver Brooks, and Amy Riddell. Find these and other poems on Bluesky. Also available in PDF and ePub.

Also, what may be the biggest day in the history of American protest is just around the corner! See you in the streets for No Kings on Saturday, October 18th.

A Letter to a Young Plagiarist

We were lucky enough to publish many wonderful poems in 2024, but one of them certainly caught your eye. We confirmed recently through a simple Google search that you, a young university student, had stolen and badly mangled one of our writers’ pieces just months after they published with us.

Plagiarism can be tricky to detect at first – we have a lot of sympathy for journals who unknowingly publish plagiarized work. But once there is suspicion of plagiarism, it becomes very easy to find more examples of it in your name. In this instance, it took about ten minutes to discover we had a serial plagiarist on our hands: another piece from a different author ripped off and published in a subsequent issue of the same unsuspecting journal.

Imagine admiring someone’s work well enough to steal it, and then imagine that writer you admire getting a call from an editor who’d discovered obvious evidence of plagiarism you committed. Editors and writers talk – none of this happens in isolation. And when it does happen, it often happens all at once. A poem you lifted months or years ago can trigger an avalanche of discovery that can all but bury your career as a writer. We don’t care if it was AI that got away from you or a more deliberate smash-and-grab: as editors, we must protect the work of writers who publish with us.

Next we reached out to the journal who published the stolen pieces, which in this case was a journal affiliated with your university. Contact information with the journal wasn’t easy to find, so we went straight to the chair of the English department. They did right by us and started the process of taking the stolen poems down. We subsequently read the university’s posted policies about plagiarism and academic dishonesty, and through those policies we gleaned an awful sense of how much difficulty and embarrassment this must have cost you. The section on revoked scholarships was particularly upsetting. We hope it didn’t come to that.

We and the poet whose work you vandalized have decided not to name you, and we’ve decided not to name your school (who, again, did nothing but right by us). Naming and shaming can be a deterrent in theory, but after carefully weighing the particulars we decided that naming you on social media would have felt too much like punching down. But please, in the future, do not give random lit journals this kind of power over you. You’re really bad at this – you clearly had no idea how lightly you covered your tracks, or how much worse you made the original poems for hacking away at them.

The worst part is that your own worthy heart was right there the whole time, just begging to be interpreted and heard. We hope you have a redemption arc ahead of you, kid. One you write yourself.

Summer 2025 in Print: Hemolymph

The Rust & Moth Summer 2025 issue is now available in print! Possessed of grit and blood-sense, these poems are hymns of the bent world. Alight with us as each page gathers to a greatness.

With new poetry from Abigail Lilith Ravenheart, Kathy Ray, Leila Farjami, Svetlana Litvinchuk, J Kramer Hare, Chris Dahl, Krysia Wazny McClain, Mickie Kennedy, Lily Jarman-Reisch, Haeun (Regina) Kim, Małgosia Halliop, John A. Nieves, Joan Roger, Angie Hexum, Barbara Daniels, Kimberly Gibson-Tran, Brendan Payraudeau, Nia Cao, Veronica Kornberg, Ben Cooper, Sarah Brockhaus, Marisa Campbell, Rachel Becker, Margaret Kasper Reed, Ron Stottlemyer, Junxin Tang, Gareth Nurden, and Eóin Flannery.

Find these and other poems on Bluesky! Also available in PDF and ePub.

A Time for Rivers

Things are pretty dark right now, America. There aren’t enough pages in the history of our journal to detail every horror taking place in the world, and even if there were, further broadcasting the harm is unlikely to help. Better, we think, to highlight the tactics and organizations that are lifting our spirits and keeping our hearts steady.

One way to inoculate a weary heart against the spectre of rising fascism — or any other kind of unneighborly behavior — is to listen to Mr. Fred Rogers, the soft-spoken but steely-eyed children’s television showrunner and minister. “Look for the helpers,” his mother would say to him whenever there were scary things in the news. “You will always find people who are helping.”

As individuals in dark rooms with lit up phones at late hours, there’s not much we can do. But when we support and join with the people who are already helping, we become helpers ourselves. One person the editors of Rust & Moth would like to help is Jeanette Vizguerra, an immigration and labor activist and mother of four who’s called America her home since 1997. She was threatened with deportation during the first Trump administration and successfully claimed sanctuary in Colorado churches at that time. With support from Democratic lawmakers across the state, including Michael Bennet, Jared Polis, and Joe Neguse, she was able to stay. However, with Trump’s return to power, she is being targeted again. Vizguerra was detained by ICE on March 17th and as of this writing is still in detention at a privately-operated detention center in Aurora, Colorado. We invite our readers to learn about her story and consider donating to her GoFundMe page, which was set up by her children to help pay for her legal costs. And if you find yourself getting lost in the complex legal details of her case, feel free to step back and simplify her situation down to five words, spoken by one of her children during a vigil for her release: “I want my mom back.”

 https://www.gofundme.com/f/4ekfk-help-reunite-my-family

We also encourage our American readers to sign up for Indivisible’s weekly emails, which come with calling assignments to elected officials — such coordinated calling jammed Congressional phone lines to the point of failure last month. You don’t have to talk to a staffer directly to have an impact either — calls left on machines in the middle of the night are just as impactful. (We’re looking at you, fellow introverts and night owls.) There are many people in the world, both inside America and out, who cannot risk a phone call to their government. If you can, please consider calling on behalf of those who can’t.

https://indivisible.org/

Finally, if your workplace is represented by a union, please consider joining. Organized labor and the power to strike are among the most powerful weapons this country has against tyranny. If you can’t find a local branch, you can start by contacting the AFL-CIO.

https://aflcio.org/formaunion/contact

The stakes are too high for isolated action; mere tributaries aren’t strong enough on their own. Now is the time for rivers for mutual aid, coordinated pressure, and calls to Congress every night. We encourage everyone led to suffering by this morally bankrupt administration to join with us as we join with Jeanette Vizguerra, our local unions, and Indivisible – or with anyone already doing the good work in your name. 

the editors, Rust & Moth

Spring 2025 in Print: Caladium

Rust & Moth’s Spring 2025 issue is now available in print! This one concerns itself with messengers; be they voices from the other side, unfamiliar eyes in the leaves, winged familiars, or the seeds we use to pay them for their troubles.

With new poetry from Lisa Marie Oliver, Gail Griffin, Elizabeth Kuelbs, Reyzl Grace, Rachel Neve-Midbar, Katie Massa Kennedy, Ziqr Peehu, Jordan Adams, Allison Mei-Li, William Aarnes, Hannah M. Matzecki, Nicole Desjardins Gowdy, Blair Benjamin, Erin Murphy, Lee Collins, David Rosenthal, Matt Cariello, Rupert Fike, Seth Copeland, Julian Koslow, Melanie Perish, Kale Hensley, Megan Eralie-Henriques, Carolyn Guinzio, Franziska Roesner, Jill Michelle, Ken Craft, Susannah Sheffer, and Dagne Forrest.

Find these and other poems on Bluesky!

2024 Pushcart Prize Nominees

The Pushcart Prize honors the best of America’s small presses, and Rust and Moth’s nominations left for Wainscott, NY by the waxing light of last month’s moon. Please enjoy these fantastic pieces from 2024!

Paper Birch, by Jennifer K. Sweeney
Cabbage White Butterfly, by Nathan Manley
A Mother, by Sam Szanto
Meditation on a Morning Dose, by Ken Hines
pomegranates, by Katerina Matta
Elegy, by Dilys Wyndham Thomas

Winter 2024 in Print: The Tea Leaf Paradox

The Rust & Moth Winter 2024 issue is now available in print! These are poems of heavy place, of creeks, haunted rivers, hard crossings, and houses just over the hill. Treat these pages as you would a map upon waking; perhaps it’s time we got to know this place for what it is, and not what it could have been.

With new poetry from Jared Beloff, Alison Hurwitz, Joshua Coben, S.M. Badawi, Mike Bove, Will Summay, Jennifer L Freed, Sarah Carleton, Finlay Worrallo, Debmalya Bandyopadhyay, Wren Donovan, Anushka Sen, T. De Los Reyes, Benjamin Patterson, Karen G. Berry, J. Greenberg, Robin Arble, Erik Kennedy, Ava O’Connor, Melody Wilson, Joanne Epp, Peter Leight, Katherine Hagopian Berry, Ken Hines, Suzanne Langlois, David Elliot Eisenstat, Julie Choffel, Matthew King, Geraldine Connolly, and Bex Hainsworth.

And to all our readers, if you tire of old and decrepit digital haunts: come find us at our homestead on Bluesky!

Goodbye Twitter, Hello Bluesky

We just deactivated our Twitter account and wow, that’s a weight lifted! Musk is a problem and he has been for a long time. We’ve been shifting our weight to Bluesky for a while, but we’re no longer content to lurk on Twitter or X or whatever Elon wants to call it anymore. The man has become a genuine and pressing threat to our democracy, and we definitely don’t want him or his impending terms of service (starting Nov 15th) using our writers’ work to train his large language models.

Hundreds of familiar faces popped up on Bluesky in the last few days, and we are buoyed and encouraged to see them. And fellow lit mags, for what it’s worth? We get comparable engagement on Bluesky with about an eighth of the followers we had on Twitter.

We look forward to a different culture, a different and more effective resistance, and the timeless medicine of poetry, all under bluer skies. Last one out turns off the lights.

Autumn 2024 in Print: My High Architect to Move

The Rust & Moth Autumn 2024 issue is now available in print! These poems are fire poems, and they stand at the border between the world that is and the world that is yet to come.

With new poetry from Laurie Klein, Sonya Schneider, Kurt Olsson, Aileen Cassinetto, Matthew Murrey, Sarah Burke, Jennifer K. Sweeney, Ron Stottlemyer, David Rosenthal, Ashley Steineger, Sam Szanto, Jeanann Verlee, Eric Brown, Samuel Prince, David Moolten, Karen Hildebrand, Beth McKinney, Lotte Mitchell Reford, Ela Kini, Amanda Auchter, Susan Barry-Schulz, Courtney Hitson, Andrea Maxine Recto, Luigi Coppola, Meredith Davies Hadaway, and Joseph Fasano.

An aside to our American readers: check your voter registration status early and often. We’ll see you at the crossroads on November 5th.

And to all our readers: we’ll see you in fields upon fields of poetry on Bluesky!

Update to Open Reading Windows

Thanks to a steady rise in submissions, we’ve decided to shorten our reading windows by one week. Effective now, we’ll be open to submissions from the 1st through the 21st of the usual reading months — March, June, September, and December. (Better, we hope, to balance the work and keep the issue from literally getting too heavy!)

Full details can be found on our submissions page: rustandmoth.com/submissions/

 

Summer 2024 is Live

Rust & Moth’s Summer 2024 issue is live! This collection burns like a red flare on a rainy highway. Crack these pages for jackknifed lines of life, death, and decisions made.

Featuring new work from Lea Marshall, Lucy Rumble, Andy Young, Ken Hines, and more, we’ll be publishing new poems online every week and building toward a finalized print edition this June. Join us online as the issue unfolds!

Spring 2024 in Print: Hēmikrania

Rust & Moth’s Spring 2024 issue is now available in print! These poems squint and strain through mist, through migraines, through floorboards, through closed blinds, blizzards, and grief unseen. What strange and luminescent creatures await us in the fog?

With new poetry from Nathan Manley, Krysten Hill, Allison Blevins, Lizzy Ke Polishan, Kylan Tatum, Stephen May, Rishi Janakiraman, Carson Wolfe, John Paul Caponigro, Tess Liegeois, Connor Watkins-Xu, Emma Harrington, Aaron Sandberg, Stefanie Leigh, Michelle Donahue, William Palmer, Suzanne Langlois, Jennifer Skogen, Aiman Tahir Khan, Ron Stottlemyer, Rosie Hong, Hannah L.D., Laura Tanenbaum, Susanna Stephens, Jackie Craven, Jennifer L Freed, Tanima, Richard Gallagher, Dilys Wyndham Thomas, Chris Talbott, Jennifer Fischer Davis, Karen McAferty Morris, Gary McDowell, and John Walser.

Find these and other poems on Bluesky. Also, ePub readers! We’re excited to announce the unveiling of our new free ePub format, which will accompany every print release going forward. Spring 2024 awaits you on Kindle and other e-readers.

Winter 2023 in Print: Nuur Throth

Rust & Moth’s Winter 2023 issue is now available in print! These quiet, solstice-dark pieces rumble with buried light. Here lie bodies on fire, faerie ships, and ribs striking flint on steel.

With new poetry from Sarah Carleton, Katy Luxem, Katherine Norton, Avery Yoder-Wells, Nathaniel J Brown, Laurie Koensgen, John L. Stanizzi, Adeline Navarro, Carla Sarett, Anna Elkins, Heather Qin, Ana María Carbonell, Carolyn Williams-Noren, Caleb F. Stocco, Sarah Mills, Faith Allington, Charles Hensler, Ken Craft, Christopher Shipman, Erin Covey-Smith, Frank Paino, Ariana D. Den Bleyker, Raina K. Puels, Suzanne Langlois, Mary Simmons, Johanna DeMay, Christina Kallery, Laurie Klein, and Sascha Cohen.

Find these and other poems at our new home on Bluesky!

2023 Pushcart Prize Nominations

The Pushcart Prize honors the best of America’s small presses, and Rust and Moth’s nominations are in the mail! Please enjoy these fantastic pieces from this year’s nominees.


Black paintings, by Lisa Bickmore

Magdalene, by Amy Thatcher

Abecedarian For My Grandmother’s Missing Toe, by Arielle Kaplan

20/20 Lexicon, by Michael Bazzett

Going Home, by Suzanne Langlois

Peeled Apples, by Carly Wheelehan Gelsinger

Autumn 2023 in Print: Black Paper

Rust & Moth’s Autumn 2023 issue is now available in print! This one is a study in long-form — with deeper breaths before each piece, line-lengths that stretch for the horizon, and growing fear for the future and its weather. All of this in the service of an old and glowing collection of orchids, scales, roots, apples, ashes, paper… and feathers.

With new poetry from Ronnie Sirmans, Jingyu Li, Smile Ximai Jiang, Richelle Buccilli, Margie Duncan, Michelle Ott, Arlene DeMaris, Victoria Melekian, Amy Lin, Alexandra Romero, Carly Wheelehan Gelsinger, Cecil Morris, Callie S. Blackstone, Isaiah Newman, Lisa Bickmore, Siddharth Dasgupta, Barbara Daniels, Ariana D. Den Bleyker, Jonathan Frey, Ziyi Yan, Julián David Bañuelos, George Chang, Linda Laderman, Jason R. Montgomery, Andrew Alexander Mobbs, Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad, Eugene Datta, JC Alfier, Iris Rosenberg, Scott Ferry, Kimberly Ann Priest, John Powers, Judy Kaber, and Jillian Clasky. Find these and other poems at our new home on Bluesky!