Advice to the Newlyweds
by Kelsey Englert
The gift of marriage is a long wait
to see what’s inside the Trojan Horse.
Kelsey Englert’s writing has appeared in Passages North, Into the Void, The Citron Review, and The Broken Plate, among other literary magazines. She is a Pennsylvania native and earned her M.A. in English from Ball State University and M.F.A. in creative writing from West Virginia University. She teaches at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. For more information, visit www.kelseyenglert.com.
See what happens when you click below.
What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Advice for the Newlyweds”? I married in the summer of 2019. As a newlywed, I received a lot (A LOT) of advice on how to “survive” marriage. Like any feedback, it required sorting. Beautiful. Cliché. Amusing. Foreshadowed doom. I titled this last category “The Trojan Horse” and it boiled down to this poem.
Check out the write-up of the journal in The Writer.
Matter Press recently released titles from Meg Boscov, Abby Frucht, Robert McBrearty, Tori Bond, Kathy Fish, and Christopher Allen. Click here.
Matter Press is now offering private flash fiction workshops and critiques of flash fiction collections here.
Submissions
Poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction/prose poetry submissions are now closed. The reading period for standard submissions opens again September 15, 2025. Submit here.
Upcoming
05/04 • Leath Tonino
05/11 • Chris Pellizzari
05/18 • Chris Clemens
05/25 • Clayton Eccard
06/01 • TBD
06/08 • TBD
06/15 • TBD
06/22 • TBD
06/29 • TBD
07/06 • TBD
07/13 • TBD
07/20 • TBD
07/27 • TBD
08/03 • TBD
08/10 • TBD
08/17 • TBD
08/24 • TBD
08/31 • TBD
09/07 • TBD
09/14 • TBD
09/21 • TBD