Welcome to The Rookery, a quarterly creative writing series published by the Creative Pinellas’ Arts Coast Journal that welcomes fledgling new voices and seasoned writers alike. I am beyond excited to be The Rookery’s editor and curator.
We welcome writers to submit work for consideration via our submission form here.
The Rookery accepts poetry, flash fiction, fiction, creative nonfiction, comics, visual, and hybrid work. Writers are also invited to share videos, visual, and experimental work. We love hybridity and experimentation. For printed work that’s been published elsewhere, please let me know the details of publication so we can credit the original publisher.
Send in work you’re excited to share with others. We are an inclusive creative writing series that is dedicated to holding space on the page for voices that are often marginalized in publishing including people of color (BIPOC); trans, queer, non-binary, LGBTQ+ people; people with disabilities; and people of all ages.
We’re a small operation, but we pride ourselves in being able to offer writers payment for publication.
To further introduce myself, I’ll share a soundscape of my poem “The Romantics” from my forthcoming poetry collection Danzirly / Dawn’s Early. The soundscape was created for Nikke Pike’s installation Totem which was recently on tour at the Dunedin Fine Arts Center. It was originally published by Cosmonauts Avenue.
. . .
All are welcome to this creative nest.
I look forward to reading your work.
Gloria Muñoz
The Rookery Editor & Curator
King of Cups
By JD Scott
. . .
Me? Understand the throne? When it’s on the ocean,
I get it, I guess. Symbols. A king is an impossible thing.
If the liquid’s free, do you drink it? The cup looks bottom-
less from here. Grace is overrated at the hands of a fling.
A throne in the ocean as impossible as a heart.
Hard to believe in taiyaki sweetness, in monarchs.
Never want to hear “master” in a sentence again.
Hard to believe in the wisdom of men, upright cards,
qualities of the human spirit. Stars. Good sexting. Brawl
and spar. So much for that fishy bling. Anything cute
is affixed to risk by a shoestring. Do you think thrones
can actually float on the ocean? Depends. What type
of wood? And the water’s capacity for hypersalinity?
Amazon splurge: when I buy bath salts, I’m the Sea King.
King of Dog Shit, King of Box Springs, Kelp, Bee Stings.
King of Double-Fisting, what’s in your cup? Jungle juice?
Everclear could be an ocean, glass beauty in name alone.
Truth be told, I never learn my lessons, always partake
forsaken sips from any man’s mean mug. Want to cherish
something more than disaster, but these men are all I know.
. . .
JD Scott is the author of the story collection Moonflower, Nightshade, All the Hours of the Day (&NOW Books, 2020) and the poetry collection Mask for Mask (New Rivers Press, 2021).
Scott’s writing has appeared in Best Experimental Writing, Best New Poets, Denver Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Indiana Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and elsewhere. More of Scott’s work can be found at jdscott.com.
Head
By Yuki Jackson
. . .
. . . . . I am a God,
. . . . . says the headless
. . . . . mannequin with breasts
. . . . . at Black Crow Grand Central
. . . . . I want to get in touch
. . . . . with the artist
. . . . . for their other piece,
. . . . . painted words on cardboard:
. . . . . THE GODS HAVE ANOT-
. . . . . HER SECRET
. . . . . the piece became hidden
. . . . . when someone
. . . . . placed a ladder in front of it
. . . . . and no matter
. . . . . how many times I try,
. . . . . I cannot get in touch
. . . . . with the artist
. . . . . as I do my work
. . . . . from across the art,
. . . . . I get a text from Chael asking,
. . . . . what’s your second greatest fear?
. . . . . I respond, to be physically vulnerable–
. . . . . I feel disconnected from my body
. . . . . after being repeatedly violated
. . . . . the mannequin bleeds,
. . . . . its head chopped off
. . . . . and next to it,
. . . . . on the wall,
. . . . . a tapestry
. . . . . from another artist
. . . . . saying, Still We Rise
. . .
Yuki Jackson is a Black and Japanese poet whose work has appeared in Four Way Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, Entropy, Foundry and other publications. She is also an educator and the founder of The Battleground, a youth program in the Sulphur Springs neighborhood of Tampa, Florida. Her website is YukiJackson.com.
