Goat's Milk Magazine

A Canadian Literary Magazine publishing the imperfect situations, the wonderfully odd, tragically beautiful, and delightfully morbid. 🐐 SUBMISSIONS OPEN 🐐

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Introducing Goat’s Milk Magazine

Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it is, but writing is hard. When you’re two hours into a productive binge and you come up for air. When you’re looking at what you wrote, pondering how difficult yet magical writing can be. The truth is, writing is hard because life is hard. Hard to start, hard to stop, hard to let it go into the world. You worry your work is destined to be unloved and unread. Worst of all, you fear rejection.

Welcome to Goat’s Milk. We want your writing, especially the work that’s hard to let go of. Work that’s messy, or left you messy after writing it. We want your visual art that physically hurt to make. If you have both, even better. We want the pieces that are wonderfully odd, tragically beautiful, delightfully morbid. Give us the piece of writing inspired by the old stove in your childhood home that you think about every time you see the burn scar. Give us the picture that’s weird, and makes people uncomfortable although no one can tell you why.

We love reading your writing and we believe in working with writers and artists of all skill levels. However, this does not mean that we accept all submissions. To understand what we do accept, we recommend reading what we’ve posted, and thoroughly reading through our submission guidelines

We thank you in advance for reading this page, and considering or actually submitting to Goat’s Milk. We’re very excited to share your work.

https://goatsmilkmagazine.ca/

Origin story: 

In the summer of 2019, the three founding editors of Goat’s Milk realized that life suddenly became too busy to keep up with a literary magazine. From the summer in 2019 to the winter in 2021, Goat’s Milk was run by five editors living in several states and two countries. Four more editors left Goat’s Milk from 2020-2021 due to work, school, and life. Goat’s Milk is now run by Lauren Gargiulo and Joseph L. Ayres.

Lauren and Joseph met in College/Jschool and bonded over being overworked, underpaid, and their mutual love of words. Lauren invited Joseph to join the Goat’s Milk team in the winter of 2020 and they have been working towards making Goat’s Milk thrive since.

https://goatsmilkmagazine.ca/contact/

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SAM COOKE

By Benjamin Adair Murphy

“He stepped in the water He helped the fishes swim When he left those fish were singing So of course they killed himThe wrong kind of voice The wrong kind of skin His car was way too pretty So of course they killed him“

READ THE FULL POEM and more by Benjamin Adair Murphy.

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LATE NIGHT EARLY MORNING BROADCAST

By Douglas Cole

“Coming to you live from burnout station. You’d think it was the Bikini Islands looking out this double pane bunker glass, desert, blown down homes and skeletons frozen mowing their lawns forever.“

READ THE FULL POEM and more by Douglas Cole.

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RED ROVER

By Daliah Angelique

“in 6th grade i ran into the girl’s fist Because we were playing red rover and her laughter came so easy and i was fawn legged and tongue tied”

READ THE FULL POEM and more by Daliah Angelique.

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THE FOOD ANTI-PROCESSOR

By Dominic Loise

“Dining in The Food Anti-Processor section privacy insured past a neon cheap plastic chain a single booth without seating on the other side barricaded off from the other customers’ eyes“

READ THE FULL  POEM and more by Dominic Loise.

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HELLO AUGUST

By Sarah Robin

“Hello August, My most productive month of the year With lots of harvest and preserving to do.

The aroma of vinegar in the kitchen Signifies the start of pickling season When gherkins are stuffed into jars”

READ THE FULL POEM and more by Sarah Robin.

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E.T. IN FLORIDA

By Daliah Angelique

“they gut the corpse of the ferris wheel from the defunct Toys “R” Us in Times Square and excavate the smiling licensed* characters from their metal tomb”

READ THE FULL POEM and more by Daliah Angelique

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COLD SPRING

By Tohm Bakelas

“throwing rocks at the sun never mattered anyway, you could never come close to hitting itthe bones of the typewriter covered in dust rests upon a table rarely touched“

READ THE FULL POEM and more by Tohm Bakelas.

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GLASS WALL

By Sarah Robin

“A naked figure sits hunched over on the floor, Their arms wrapped around their body. Surrounded by a wall of thick glass; Closed off from everyone and everything But visible to all.”

READ THE FULL POEM and more by Sarah Robin.

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PLACE SETTINGS

By Samantha Malay

“in the still air             of my mother-in-law’s livingroom         I kneel on the rug             to nest dishes in boxes

and I see her hair sleek as bird-wings”

READ THE FULL POEM and more by Samantha Malay.

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SERENBE

By Rachel McCarren

“The red-hot clay beats like blood beneath bare feet. In the morning, I run from the pale pink sun through pine-needle pastures. Something draws me faster down the path to the pine grove.”

READ THE FULL POEM and more by Rachel McCarren.

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THE HANGED MEN

By Owen Schalk

“They found a man with bricks in his pockets hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London. His name was Roberto Calvi. He was the chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, which was in the midst of a historic collapse following revelations of financial irregularities worth billions of lire. The main shareholder in Banco Ambrosiano was the Vatican Bank, which led many Italians to dub Calvi “God’s Banker.” Some joked upon his death that his main investor had finally lost patience with his management.

Calvi had been missing for seven days, and much like Michele Sindona, it seemed like everyone who mattered wanted him gone: the Holy See, the Sicilian Mafia, the political establishment, and associates of Banco Ambrosiano ranging from Polish anti-Soviet groups to Nicaraguan drug traffickers. There were so many suspects that it took people ages to notice the clue right under their noses. Calvi was hanged from Blackfriars Bridge. “Black friar” in Italian is frate nero.  Frati neri was the internal moniker of members of the Propaganda Due (P2) Masonic lodge, a subcutaneous organism within the Italian body politic that sought an extreme rightist restructuring of the country’s political and economic life based on the model of another hanged man, Benito Mussolini. Its members included prominent businessmen, media moguls, military officials, intelligence officers, representatives from Southern Cone dictatorships – and Roberto Calvi himself.”

CONTINUE READING

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GIRLHOOD GOTHIC

By Daliah Angelique

“we are petty girltime criminals, all guts and guile, all schoolyard blood pacts and slumber party rituals, queens of our dilapidated hospice town, precocious and feral.”

READ THE FULL POEM and more by Daliah Angelique

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THE ANGERNAUT MANAGEMENT

By Dominic Loise

“”The Angernaut Management steered for the siren calls raging rocks clashed together in the office pool not keeping the ship steady while the pigs ran wild as long as the bacon was brought in”

READ THE FULL POEM and more by Dominic Loise.

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EXITING THE SUN

By Tohm Bakelas

“sifting through the wreckage of her marriage, she sits on the front porch as her daughter plants zinnias in the front yard and her son dances with sunbeams between porch spindle shadows”

READ THE FULL POEM by Tohm Bakelas.

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ANIMAL CRUELTY

By Ryan Shane Lopez

“Welcome to the House of the Lord, everyone, and especially to each of our little critters who were able to join us tonight.

I’m Pastor Lambert, and I’m so glad you’re all here for this momentous Sunday evening at Open Arms Fellowship. Shortly, we’ll be taking a vote that could shape the very future of our congregation. A vote, I pray, which will determine once and for all how we are to interpret and respond to the unprecedented presence of these little critters, as we’ve come to call them.

A few quick reminders: If you’re a guest tonight, we’re so glad you’re here, but we do ask that only tithing members cast a vote. We also ask that everyone switch off your cell phones and any other recording devices, as sadly, in the past, there has been the occasional sheep in wolf’s clothing who sought to exploit the least of these among us. As God’s People, we must always speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. Amen?”

CONTINUE READING

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FOR THE WOMEN WHO DISAPEAR

By Rachel McCarren

“In the darkness, her skin glows like white silk. Her mouth is bound by a ragged cloth she’s naked, hogtied on her side with triple-tied knots of red rope. Her blue eyes stare up through the jagged peaks of pines, trace the bleary outline that marks the rippling spine of the Wicklow mountainside.”

READ THE FULL POEM and more by Rachel McCarren.