Hi All, I’m the guest editor for issue 13 of The Real Rearview Review. Please submit three to five poems in a single Microsoft Word document or one flash fiction piece 1,000 words or under. Send it to: therealrearview [at] gmail [dot] com. We want your best work. Page one should contain a brief bio and cover letter. Please include in the cover letter how you heard of us, why you are submitting, why anyone should care about you, your credit card numbers, and the latest photo of yourself. The current staff here are always on the prowl for a date. There’s a $15 reading fee, which will be debited from your credit card, but you will receive a free back issue of the journal – pick up only. If your work is accepted, you agree to grant us First North American Serial Rights, while allowing us to treat you as a second-class citizen. You will be required to swear a blood oath then buy five issues where your work appears at double the cost, which will also be debited from your credit card. When your work gets rejected, a snazzy left-handed but artfully crafted letter written in third person present perfect will get posted to our Facebook page along with your picture, home address, and credit card numbers so your friends and family can also laugh at you. When you submit, you also agree to be placed on our mailing list, so we can bombard your computer with malware.
Please disregard our mission statement and aesthetic this month. It doesn't matter what the journal appreciates since the current staff are jerks. Also, our readership is flaky and doped out on recreational and prescription drugs, so they enjoy anything we set in front of them. Issue 14 will be a psychedelic Barney coloring book.
Material that I will reject: overtly sincere, high-school dating, love stories, sparkly vampire love stories, sparkly umpire love stories, werewolf versus sparkly vampire versus sparkly umpire love stories, and tactical euphoric escapisms. A tactical euphoric escapism can simply be defined as anything that I don’t agree with.
Material that I will accept: complete insincerity, werewolf dog sleds steered by sparkly umpire stories, Star Wars fandom, comic book / Greek myth mash-ups, tales of Transformers and Go-Bots procreating with women of the earth and producing android children. Yes, I did write Go-Bots in case you thought you were suffering from paresthesia. I don’t care if everyone thinks Go-Bots are generic Transformers. Go-Bots are awesome, and everyone is robophobic.
Special Note If your story or poem discusses my favorite subject: the destruction of humanity and returning earth back to nature, I will publish your work and nominate you for the Nobel Prize in literature - irregardless of using prefixes to create imaginary words, constructing sentences that are improperly grammatical, or ridiculous displays; of punctuat’n, and mispellings.
Happy writing, and I wish you all the best ¾ The Editerror
At the Aphelion
I If the sun died right now. We’d still have about 5.08 x 10² seconds to build our spaceship.
II I have witnessed exponential developments in the fields of medicine and technology throughout my lifetime. What I have come to realize is that there are even more invaluable advancements that remain hidden from the public. It’s estimated that the technology released is at least ten years behind, and the healthcare services far more. Why? The world is at the height of significant potential, yet we still get our energy from dead plants and we still die from friction burns.
III I watched a documentary about how scientists conducted an experiment to breed foxes to become docile. The technicians would only allow foxes with a benevolent personality to mate. After several generations, it was found that the foxes were far less hostile, plus they started to have the appearance of a domesticated dog, which included floppy ears, short/curly tails -they even began to wag their tails when excited. This made me wonder if evil could be bred out of humanity. What if we only allowed good-hearted people to reproduce? Would it yield a population of gentle and caring human beings? Would our appearance also change? Would we look more like angels? But I should stop these thoughts because people would reject this fantastic improvement. One reason would be that everything from crime prevention to national security is part of the economy. Can you imagine the loss of jobs and money? Some people can’t appreciate kindness without its opposite. I have found that evil has become such a facet of life that we feel empty living without it. Humanity has arrived at the pinnacle of knowledge, culture, and ability – yet we still can’t seem to solve the most obvious problem of us.
IV I need to find a planet with an approximately 7,917 mile diameter near a star yellow dwarf star with a decent amount of water, so I relocate there with my wife and cat. And to show my gratitude for leaving Earth, I promise not to reproduce.
V You're welcome.
Bio: Nick Romeo is a multidisciplinary artist, musician and writer. Nick lives in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania with his wife and cat, Megatron.