Johnny Cordova

Chill Subs is running their annual Best Lit Mag Awards. Voting is open to all! If what we’re doing at Shō Poetry Journal resonates with you, please consider voting for us! 🥹 You can vote for up to five lit mags.

Multiple copies of Shō Poetry Journal issue No. 6 laid out on a table, forming a series of eyes

We’d like to get issues of Shō Poetry Journal into more hands! From now until November 30, we're offering our five most recent issues at $8 each (33% off). Orders $24 and above ship free.

No code needed: shopoetryjournal.com/shop

Pictured: Shō No. 6 (Winter 2024/25); cover art by Tanya Rastogi.

The poets who complain about form rejections are the same poets who complain about feedback from editors?

Fair enough. A lot to like about the Bucs.

It's October. Wait and see.

The Chiefs.

Impressive win. I like your team.

It's a coach's responsibility to teach a young quarterback the wisdom of self-preservation.

Hispanic Heritage Month Playlist 2025 - Shō Poetry Journal To celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month, we've curated this selection of poems by US-based Shō Poetry Journal contributors. This playlist features audio recordings by Jenna Martínez, Asheley…

Be sure to listen to @shopoetryjournal.bsky.social’s #NationalHispanicHeritageMonth playlist!

It features eleven poets recently published in the journal, including Jenna Martínez, Nina C. Peláez, Alejandro Lucero, Nathan Xavier Osorio, and more: shopoetryjournal.com/hispanic-her...

Five colorful issues of Shō Poetry Journal laid next to each other on a light grey mottled background. Black text on a pale cream background reads: "Open for Cover Art / Shō No. 8 (Winter 2025/26) / Free to submit / Closes October 12 / shopoetryjournal.submittable.com / Shō Poetry Journal / An Arizona-based print journal"

We are seeking cover art for our winter issue!

Send us up to 8 pieces to consider. It’s free to submit. Payment is one contributor copy and a small honorarium.

Full details: tinyurl.com/shocoverart

LAST CALL!!!

Subs close at the top of the hour.

Last call for submissions for Shō No. 8! We're still seeking work for our winter issue. Submissions close on August 31 at 11.59pm PT. We respond to submissions in 30 days or less.

This weekend is the last chance to get your work in.
Submissions close Sunday at midnight (PT).

Submit: shopoetryjournal.submittable.com

It's official: Shō Poetry Journal now nominates work for Best of the Net! We are pleased to share our nominees for the 2026 anthology.

Read these selected poems online at: shopoetryjournal.com/category/read/

These poems appear in Shō No. 7 (Summer 2025) alongside work by 41 other fantastic poets.

[Illustration of two white stars and one white hummingbird shaped like a star, a take on The Star tarot card by Harim Choi. Text reads: Submissions close in 6 days.]

Submissions close in 6 days! We're looking for more work to fill our pages for Shō No. 8 (Winter 2025/26).

Submit: shopoetryjournal.submittable.com

Sometimes I catch myself parenting in the shadow of the Khmer Rouge.

Thanks to @shopoetryjournal.bsky.social and its editors for publishing this poem.

Happy Sunday, All!

If you're sending out work this weekend, please keep us in mind.

Pastel yellow/orange backgrounded black text on dark purplish background. Text reads: Join these poets in Shō No 8 Winter Issue Sean Cho A. Elisa Luna Ady Apollo Chastain Carlos Andrés Gómez Iain Grinbergs Shira Haus Aiman Tahir Khan Sophie Klahr Elizabeth Loudon Betsy Mitchell Martinez Rebecca Morton Lisa Mottolo James O’Leary Konstantinos Patrinos Ngoc Pham Jessica Nirvana Ram Jemma Leigh Roe Adrie Rose SM Stubbs Virgil Suárez Tiezst Taylor Reed Turchi Margaret Wack Joey Wańczyk Gwenyth Wheat Yan Zhang Submit: shopoetryjournal.submittable.com Submissions close August 31

Status Update: We've accepted 38 poems by 26 poets for our winter issue and are looking for more work! Each issue of Shō typically features 40-50 poets.

• Send 3-5 unpublished poems
• Submissions close August 31
• We respond to all submissions in 30 days or less

shopoetryjournal.submittable.com

We’ve entered the final month of our reading period for Shō No.8. Send us poems!

• Payment is one contributor copy

• We award prize money for best poem in issue and best poem by an emerging poet

• We nominate for Best New Poets, Best Spiritual Lit, and the Pushcart Prize

Yellow text on midnight-hued background. Oil painting on canvas shows a full yellow moon in a misty shadowed forest at night. Text reads: Shō Poetry Journal · An Arizona-based print journal · Open for Submissions · Send us 3-5 poems · We respond within 30 days · Shō No. 8 (Winter 2025/26) · shopoetryjournal.submittable.com

We are reading submissions for our winter issue. If you love holding a volume of poetry in your hands and like the work we've published, check us out! Submit 3-5 unpublished poems, no theme.

shopoetryjournal.submittable.com

Cover art: Close-up from "Interim" by Tanya Rastogi.

I absolutely have an imaginary reader in mind but have no idea who it is 😂

Johnny Cordova: Two Poems - Cultural Daily Two poems by Johnny Cordova: "This mountain has gotten inside me. / I hear it rumbling through my hollow bones. / It rises in me like a dark sun..."

Honored to have two poems chosen by @bunkong.bsky.social for Cultural Daily.

“The Young Man on the Train” was written during a 26-day pilgrimage through India in 2014.

“The Mountain and the Monk” is a persona poem.

www.culturaldaily.com/johnny-cordo...

If you're sending out work this weekend, please keep us in mind.

• Payment is one contributor copy

• We nominate for Best New Poets, Best Spiritual Lit, and the Pushcart Prize

• We award prize money for best poem in issue and best poem by an emerging poet

Submissions to Shō Poetry Journal are always free for Native American and Indigenous Canadian poets. Details: shopoetryjournal.submittable.com

Cover Art from "In Gilded Walls" by Tanya Rastogi, Shō No. 6 (Winter 2024/25)

But have you been rejected by Taco Bell Quarterly while eating a bean burrito?

Shō Poetry Journal on a kitchen counter. Cover depicts a gorgeous blue painting of a figure in a white dress with a bird head sitting on a limb under the moon.

AMORAK HUEY Beer Garden, Ohio Nearby, someone sparks a cigar to life, the odor of it rises, is what we both will remember later— not the light, which is ordinary, nor the depth of the sky, the ever so slightest of winds, absence of temperature-but the smell of burning earth, rich like that, and the rough wood table between us and the fear neither of us can shake that none of this is real, that like the smoke it could all go away which it could, but it hasn't.

The new issue of @shopoetryjournal.bsky.social is gorgeous & I’m grateful to have two poems in it. Here’s one:

Cover of Shō Poetry Journal No. 7

Page 1 of “From the Great Depression” by Aaron Caycedo-Kimura

Page 2 of “From the Great Depression” by Aaron Caycedo-Kimura

“Summer Evening” by Aaron Caycedo-Kimura

Many thanks to @domkeykong.bsky.social and @johnnycordova.bsky.social for including my poems “From the Great Depression” and “Summer Evening” in the latest issue of @shopoetryjournal.bsky.social! It’s a beautiful issue. #poetry #poems #poets #poetrycommunity #poetrylovers #poetryreaders

Sho no 7 fresh off the press

It’s been two years since we released our revival issue, and we’re excited to share our summer issue, which features 67 poems by 48 poets!

Now shipping: shopoetryjournal.com/product/sho-...

Text reads: READ A POEM SHÔ NO. 7 (SUMMER 2025) from "somehow" it begins with <b>dreams</b> are like cicadas clueless where your heart flutters nonstop in an airplane bound for <b>america</b> used be a part of <b>your dreams</b> now throwing a wild party & you're your papery heart too dumb to know what it feels like to be held by a man calls you baby and the whole world condenses too soon

About this poem: This poem was my first real reckoning with the fact that I was leaving my country for another. At the time, I didn’t yet understand the weight of that truth. In the morning, I carried on with my life as if nothing mattered. But, at night, I would bawl my eyes out at the thought of everything I had left behind. So, writing this poem felt necessary; I didn’t want that feeling of letting go to slip away.

New poem online! “somehow” by Ohia, Ernest Chigaemezu appears in Shō Poetry Journal's Summer 2025 issue and was selected by the editors as the Winner of the Sita Martin Prize.

Read the poem (with audio read by the poet’s friend, Aidan Miles-Jamison) at shopoetryjournal.com/ernest-ohia/

from "Nocturne" I believed I could be more than man &, for two hours, became / the darkest bird in Hamilton County—barely eighteen, // midnight blue, resting my warm, bare feet on sheets ofgale of gale / as fog-sopped night made kindred of me. CHRISTIAN J. COLLIER Winner of the Shō Poetry Prize

Take a peek at our summer issue! Read "Nocturne" by Christian J. Collier, a poem selected by the editors as the Winner of the Shō Poetry Prize.

shopoetryjournal.com/christian-j-...