Quick links to the new words: “Take a Femur, Leave a Femur” by Leigh Chadwick (fiction) and “As Soon as You Leave This Town” by Liz Shulman (nonfiction). And a picture: Ampydoo Cartoon #10.
Dear Identity Theory Readers,
This’ll be a short one. Many of you are attending something called an AWP. I am not there.
Big Money, No Whammies!
After reaching our monthly free submission cap early for the second month in a row, we decided to launch paid submissions on Submittable this week. We took this action because we didn’t want to have to keep Submittable closed for a third of the month.
Everyone still has the option to submit for no cost via email 24/7/365 and can also submit for free during the early part of each month on Submittable, but we opened this paid submission option for people who would rather use Submittable than email us when the free submissions are closed.
The cost of sending an optional paid Submittable submission is $5.
Take a Femur, Leave a Femur: More Malarkey from Leigh Chadwick
Here’s an extended clip of “Take a Femur, Leave a Femur” by your favorite poet, Leigh Chadwick:
I decide to build a county fair in my back yard, so I go to Lowe’s and buy a hammer, some nails, and a plastic children’s pool for the dunk tank. On my way home from Lowe’s, I steal some trees I find planted in a median in the middle of Johnson Street. When I get home, I chop up the trees and use the wood to build a seesaw.
I hire a Fat Elvis impersonator. Fat Elvis’s job consists of sitting on one end of the seesaw and flinging the children who sit across from him into space. I hire a guy to do nothing but howl at the sky. He asks if he can whistle at any clouds shaped like the mole on Marilyn Monroe’s cheek. I tell him, Sure, have at it.
A couple hours before we’re set to open, Fat Elvis tells me he has to take a piss. Something to do with his prostate. I forgot to rent a Porta Potty and I’ve always kept a sparse yard, so there are no bushes for Fat Elvis or any of the future patrons to hide behind to take a piss. I decide I have no choice but to break into a nursing home and steal a closet full of catheters.
Even though it’s daylight, I dress in all black and crawl through a window of the Sunny Meadows nursing home. I can’t find a closet full of spare catheters, so I have to pull them out of the old folks trapped in the old folks’ home.
I give fake Fat Elvis a catheter and then begin gluing toy ponies to a scratched Neutral Milk Hotel record. I am making a miniature merry-go-round where every guest can put a picture of what has left them on a pony and watch it go in circles. There is a sign in front of the merry-go-round stating everyone is expected to feel something…
Seriously, Leigh Chadwick is your favorite poet. You may or may not know it yet. She even has a book coming out from Malarkey Books called Your Favorite Poet. You can preorder it now.
(Or you can wait ‘til you read the rest of the above story—at which point you’ll definitely want to order it.)
Also, Leigh Chadwick just launched a paid Substack newsletter called “The Leigh Chadwick Review.” You’ve spent $7 in worse ways.
As Soon as You Leave This Town
On Twitter, our esteemed copyeditor Liz Conard gushed about Liz Shulman’s new essay “As Soon as You Leave This Town”:
“I loved editing this piece for @IdentityTheory—it reminded me so much of my own nostalgia around favorite English teachers, high school crushes, and how everything feels simultaneously different and the same when you go to visit your hometown.”
Here’s a sample of Liz Shulman’s essay:
Kyle moved his hands through my hair. After we made out for a while, we turned on our backs and looked up at the ceiling. Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
“High school feels so far away,” Kyle said. I agreed.
For some reason, perhaps none other than knowing that soon this scene, too, would be over, or perhaps because Kyle, the intended recipient of the letters, would be the only person I’d ever tell, I decided I needed to let him know during a pause in our making out.
“Do you remember getting anonymous notes from someone in high school?” I asked.
In a matter of seconds, Kyle moved from looking confused, then remembering, then realizing it was me. He lay on his back, his hand on his forehead. Outside the bedroom, the music had gotten loud again. The weather that Thanksgiving weekend was predicted to be cold. Kyle told me that he thought it was cool, he was flattered, that I should have told him in high school.
“It’s not like we can return to high school,” he said. “We’re both going back to college on Sunday.”
“I know,” I said. I know. I no longer love him, that’s certain, but maybe I love him.
Read the rest of “As Soon as You Leave This Town” by Liz Shulman.
As Promised: A Horse
Somehow we returned to horses yet again this week, this time courtesy of a cartoon by Alan Michael Parker.
This Could Get Random
Our poetry editor, Danielle Rose, has launched a Substack of her own. She named her newsletter Malcontent Theory. Does that make it our cousin? Keep it in the family and subscribe.
Read “Milestones,” a new story at Maudlin House from our prose editor, Wilson Koewing.
We’re approximately 100 followers away from hitting 10,000 followers on Twitter. Spread the word!
Due to continuing issues with our server/host, our website was down for an entire day from Sunday afternoon through Monday afternoon. The outage also affected our emails. If you’ve written to us but have not received a response, feel free to check in to make sure we received your submission/query/etc. I’m working on moving to a new provider, but first I have to make some time-consuming backend changes to the website. (The labor that goes into managing 22 years of website content!)
Speaking of which, please consider a monthly “subscription” or a one-time donation to our magazine.
My new pride and joy, the Identity Theory LinkedIn page, has 111 followers now. Aim high: add “112th Follower of the Identity Theory LinkedIn Page” to your resume.
While on the topic of resumes, we’ve received a record number of fiction editor applications, but we’re probably going to need to add several to our team, so please apply within the next few days if you’re interested. Going to close the position at the end of the month. We’re also looking for a visuals editor.
That’ll be all now. How’s your week going?
Love in the time of oligarchy,
Matt Borondy
EIC
Identity Theory
“You’ve spent $7 in worse ways” 😂😂😂