Sabotage. So fun to say.

It thumps like a shoe dropped into the gears. It smolders like a slow fuse lit under the floorboards. 

For Journal Sixteen, we are looking for sabotage. Sweet or bitter. Large or small. It might be a quiet refusal, a deliberate misstep, a coded message, or a love letter never sent. It might be the body rebelling against itself, a system collapsing from within, a character who undermines their own desires. It might be the artist’s hand trembling on purpose, the poem that undoes its own logic, the narrative that eats its tail.

As always, we invite you to interpret this theme liberally—bend it, twist it, betray it. Sabotage it, if you must.  

Send us your beautiful wreckage, your quiet detonations, your elaborate ruses, and your betrayals of self. We’ll be listening for the sound of gears grinding, the machinery silenced.

Muleskinner Journal Sixteen will from October 15 to December 15. Do your worst. It's Sabotage!

See our submission guidelines for deadlines, manuscript requirements, and other information