Slush

"Myself your general," as Queen Elizabeth told her troops at Tilbury, or myself your editor.

This page is for your submissions. Let's see what's out there, prose, poetry, or what you will. Like all the other editors, I'll say excellence is our only real criterion.

But wouldn't it be interesting for a magazine to simply publish the first ten submissions it got each month, as a matter of historical record? I think there is a short story itself in there. An associate editor surreptitiously gathers up and takes home the stuff from her boss' waste basket one afternoon, and publishes it herself, somehow. She means it as a tribute to the thousands of hopeful people slogging away with paper and pen each day, trembling with joy and horror as the package drops into the mailbox, all those stamps and the New York address dropping down into the dark .... Though we all just click "Send" now.

And though I'll also say I want nothing obscene or loaded with gratuitous Anglo-Saxon words. And I reserve the right to affix the labels of my choice.

What do you think? The next big thing in online publishing? Or a mere invitation to learn the lesson Harriet the Spy learned in sixth grade -- that "what you want is maybe stupid"?

Electronic submissions only. Click send. Keep them pretty short. It's good discipline, and this is the internet, you know. No promises, no pay. That is, unless Slush becomes a hit and I start raking in millions. Thanks.