poems – Sara Anne Valentiuk

Some days were stronger than my bones, some months were stronger than my soul, but no year was ever stronger than me as a whole.

-Ruchi Acharya, Founder and CEO of Wingless Dreamer Publisher

It was May 2024, and I was hot off the high of my advanced poetry workshop. I’d just learned about Submittable and spent hours sifting through the endless open calls for submissions. I took my professor’s advice to heart and did my research—no sketchy sites and no fees over $3. I was a new and barely published poet, but I was cautiously optimistic.

I found three promising landing pads for my work: MER, 805, and Wingless Dreamer. After meticulously drafting cover letters, bios, and manuscripts for each one, I hit submit. There was something equally exhilarating and terrifying about sending my work out into the world to be judged by experts in the craft.

Then, only five days later, I received my first acceptance letters. I was stunned. And immediately suspicious. Funny how my brain works, huh?

I skimmed Wingless Dreamer’s email and got stuck at the line “We will proceed with the necessary steps for publication, including editing and formatting.” Most people would think, Hurray! My poem is on the path to publication! Not me. I saw that and immediately turned into a poema bear.

I responded with gratitude, and a request to be involved in the editing process. I sweated it out for 24 hours before following up again. Finally, the editor Shreya sent me a reassuring response, promising to loop me in if there were any major changes. I thanked her and asked a couple follow -up questions regarding the publication timeline. After ten days with no response, I started to question their legitimacy and wrote that I wanted to withdraw my poems. One poem’s status was changed to “withdrawn,” but the other remained “accepted”

I wondered about it, but life got busy. A couple weeks later I received an email congratulating me on my publication in the Mother’s Reverie Anthology. I followed the link to Amazon and there it was, a legitimate book for sale! I was still skeptical, especially since contributors didn’t get a free copy, but I bought it anyway.

It made the perfect 2025 Mother’s Day gift, and yes, my poem’s integrity was still in-tact. Recently, I looked back over that initial acceptance letter, and something in hyperlink blue stood out for the first time: their Terms and Conditions. I opened it read: We reserve the right to modify the accepted work in terms of phrasing, punctuation, word usage, spelling, and capitalization. We will notify the author beforehand if there are any major changes.

I took an experiential course on literary magazines in spring of 2025, and all I can think of now is how annoyed that editor must have been! I know now that it’s a thankless, often unpaid job and she was probably rolling her eyes at my crash out. To Shreya, if you ever see this, I apologize for my barrage of questions that could have easily been answered if I had simply slowed down and read the fine print.

I have yet to receive any more acceptance letters in Submittable, but I know that when I do, I will read them in their entirety.

Below is my poem as it appears in Mother’s Reverie by Wingless Dreamer Publisher:

Mother Greeted Us

With Spring came the promise
of dirt-black fingernails
from digging trenches
and shaping mountains
to sprinkle with new beginnings.
When the seeds took root
and the garden turned green,
we went to war with the weeds
invading its borders. But,

before the battle could be won,
humidity rode in on Spring’s delicate back,
driving us to the sandy shores
of Geneva Lake. It was here
that we shapeshifted into
crooning mermaids or shipwrecked pirates
and always returned home
lobster red. Mother greeted us,
coaxing the burns out
with sticky, soothing aloe vera.

When Autumn’s gentle kiss
bade Summer’s heat farewell,
we raked orange needles
into a town. Piney Point
with the best mudpies around.
We strung sheets from trees’ low hanging limbs
that ripped beneath our weight,
sending us tumbling to the earth.

When snow erased this made-up town,
we attacked snow-ploughed mountains
with shovel and hand and foot;
carving caves and tunnels to shelter us
from the biting cold.
We journeyed, trudging, dragging broken sleds
past True Value and over train tracks
to the slopes of Old Faithful.

We slid down the hill’s slippery face
and returned home sloppy, chilled
to the bone. Mother greeted us,
coaxing the cold out
with gentle kisses and steaming cocoa.

If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.

-Margaret Atwood

I’ve heard that good writers are never truly satisfied with their work but simply know when it’s time to put it down. Sure, they might see the possibilities that tweaking a line here and there might offer, but they are able to step back and discern when a poem or story is polished and complete. This, I recently realized, is a skill I’m still honing.

My poem 528 Kenosha St. was published in the 13th edition of The Nemadji Review. It was crafted from a freewrite exercise in my Intro to Creative Writing course. The assignment was to tap into our childhood memories and wonder by describing the house we grew up in. Then, we were instructed to take that description and turn it into a poem. My instructor’s feedback on this assignment changed the trajectory of my academic focus. She was the first person to call me a poet and encouraged me to submit the final version to the school magazine.

I remember the day I received my two contributor copies in the mail—how I eagerly opened the magazine to my poem, my first poem since childhood to appear in print. The first poem to make me feel like a true poet. A published poet. Imagine my disappointment when, upon reading it, all I could see were its now glaringly obvious flaws. I immediately saw a need for different line breaks, more white space for the imagery to breathe, and a more formal structure (I have a penchant for tercets and quatrains).

The version below is how my poem “528 Kenosha St.” appears in my Onedrive. There are so many details I could include, so many memories I could relive. For now, though, this version feels polished and complete. When—if I may be delusional for a moment—my published poems are formed into a collection, this will be the version I include. Though let’s be real, when the time comes, I’ll probably still find flaws in it!

528 Kenosha St.

The house peeked out
from behind
a spattering
of pine. Decrepit

but alive, its white
exterior crackled
like a thousand
smiling eyes. Broken

concrete danced
past flowers
tenderly pruned,
and cheap lace

filtered sunlight
on the carpet,
tired and blue.
The bathtub sighed

beneath the bottles
and mildew
crowding its ledge,
and the kitchen’s

peel-and-stick tile
curled up
’round the oven’s legs.
The bank didn’t see

the memories etched
into its walls and
floors and heart.
When the passing

of childhood
left it hushed
and hollowed,
they fed it to the flames.

Reducing memories
to a slab of concrete,
all evidence of
my childhood erased.