Submissions: Hybrids

Reading Schedule for Hybrids:

ISSUE 14 — Oct 21-27, 2025

What to submit:

Send a total of 2-3 haibun, tanka prose, or other hybrids that include single-line poems in any form a single line can take. The only requirements are that they are under 300 words and include at least one (1) single-line poem (of any shape). They may, in addition, contain enjambed poems.

Submit via the form and enter the title in the “poem” space. Then email your submission below using the "Submit attachments" button. Send your submission in a .doc, .docx, or Google Doc; if the formatting is complex in nature, also attach a .pdf. Make sure your name is in the file name. If you email your submission but don't fill out the form, we cannot process your submission, so please be sure to take both steps.

We like our hybrids like we like our short poems…wild and free… and as always, we love it when you send something you wrote for us (or for your truest self).

Or send us something we’ve never seen in a hybrid!

Single-line poems may be of any variety, including monostich haiku, senryu, nanoku, one-line tanka, poetic fragments, one-line micropoems, or lyrical lines. Be creative: Poems may be one word in length up to a column’s width, written horizontally, vertically, or as a concrete poem* in any shape a line may take (e.g. circle, squiggle, arrow, square, etc . . .) For vertical one-liners we are looking for poems with ONLY one word or part of a word per line. Such poems must work as single-line poems with the display enhancing the meaning.

Cover Art - Please submit 3 -5 pieces and you may include a link to your website if you’d like us to link back.

Send us poems that are an expression of how you see or interpret the world—poems only you could write. We love communion with nature, journeys of transformation and healing, personal explorations and boundary-pushing, and honest experiences of the poet. While we do publish senryu and humancentric poems, most of the poems we publish incorporate nature elements or are grounded in nature.

*A note regarding formatting:

Our default formatting is double-justified with a space between each paragraph. If your work is not to be formatted this way for concrete reasons related to the content of the piece, please note that in your email. For those creating concrete pieces, our journal is landscape orientation (8 1/2 x 11) using 1" margins and 1.15" line spacing; we use Nunito font in size 12 (titles in size 14 bolded).

We've been asked, "What can we send?"

Haibun (including burning haibun)?
Tanka?
Zuihitsu?
Sonnet?
Erasure poem?
Duplex?
Pantoum?
Free verse poem?
Prose poetry?
Lyrical poetry?
A combination of short poems?

Yes to all of the above and more.

Anything you can think up that includes the 3 elements: body (which can be comprised of any number of things), a one-line poem, and a title. These should shift and not repeat information between elements.

How to submit:

Submit your poems via the Google form using the Submit button below.

(IF YOU ARE COMBINING POETRY FORMS, PLEASE NOTE WHAT THEY ARE INTENDED TO BE.)

*FOR CONCRETE POEMS AND OTHER IMAGES, complete the Google form and choose the selection indicating that you will be sending image files. Then email your submission below using the "Submit attachments" button. If you use imaging software with letters only, please use a transparent background and send jpeg or png in 600 DPI. If you use Google Docs or MS docs to make your poem, please send as a Google Doc or .doc/.docx. The font we use is Nunito, so you may want to consider if it will affect your presentation.

FOR COVER ART, follow the above.

Response time:

No simultaneous submissions, please. We will respond to all submissions. We aim to do so within 4-6 weeks; please check your emails. Also, double-check that there are no typos in your email address when you submit.

Submit attachments

Link will go live when the submission window reopens.

We do not publish any of the following:

anything racist
anything misogynistic
anything xenophobic
anything homophobic
anything transphobic
anything ableist
religion flaming
violence or graphic death (including animals); death as a topic is fine in a memorial sense (e.g. grief, longing, etc.).
pornographic imagery
appropriation of any kind

Rights and terms:

All submitted work must be your original and previously unpublished work. This means poems have not appeared on social media or personal sites or blogs as we want to be the first venue to present your poem to the public (closed/private workshops are fine). This also means the work was written by you and not in any part by any AI program. Include your name as you wish it to appear in publication.

whiptail retains the right to publish your work on our website and social media accounts. All rights return to the author upon publication. whiptail reserves the right to reuse work that has appeared in the journal, with proper citation, in any future print or electronic collections or anthologies. If the author wishes to later republish the work, whiptail requests that you cite the journal as the venue of first publication.

Payment:

whiptail is a non-paying market.

Accolades:

whiptail considers all of the poems we publish for awards such as The Haiku Foundation’s Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun, Best of the Net, The Pushcart Prize, Red Moon Anthology, and more.