MQR Mixtape: Haunting
Ends on
Edited by Malia Maxwell
In Ar:range:ments, Esther Kondo Heller writes, “mama what should I call you now that you are gone? / froth: spirit : marrow : wind”. While elegy soundly fits in the realm of “haunting” literature, Kondo Heller’s coloned list enacts another kind of haunting. The speaker cycles through names without landing on an answer, returning to the void at the site of their question. Indeed, Oxford English Dictionary’s many definitions of “haunt” include “To resort to frequently or habitually; to frequent or be much about (a place).” Haunting has as much to do with ghosts and states of unease—consider authors like Carmen Maria Machado and Jane Wong for luminous examples—as it does with habit.
For this issue of MQR Mixtape, I am seeking poems, essays, short fiction, and visual art that engage with the spectrum (and spectralities) of “haunting.” Give me ghost stories and habits broadly understood or work that engages specific traditions of haunting such as the apparitional lesbian or the haunted anthropocene. Give me metapoetic work that dis/engages formal traditions. Haunt me. For this issue, I am as much interested in haunted genres or subjects as I am in work that resists or enacts haunting on a formal level.
Poetry: up to three poems
Prose*: up to 3,000 words
*short stories, flash fiction, non-fiction essays
Visual art/photography: up to five works
Hybrid work**: up to five pages
**multimedia work, comics, collaborations (within and across disciplines), archival materials, love letters, etc. Surprise me!
Only previously unpublished work will be considered. Simultaneous submissions are permitted, but please notify us immediately if your work is accepted by another publication. Please send only one submission per window; subsequent submissions will be rejected automatically.
Submission Deadline: June 1, 2025