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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · Aug 25

Share your work with us!

Image: Close-up photo of coffee beans. Text: Final Week! Milk & Cake Press will close for submissions to our biennial anthology Dead of Winter: Volume IV. Aug 31th Don’t miss your chance to be a part of our anthology! Submit 1-3 poems through Duosuma. There is no submission fee. For more details check our website or Duosuma listing.

Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · Aug 23

We are so excited to work with these lovely poets!

@meganleonard.bsky.social
@ellenaustinli.bsky.social

Image: Photo of a beach where the sand and water meet diagonally across the image. Text: Announcing Milk & Cake Press’ newest poets whose work we will be publishing 2026-2027: Megan Leonard, Ellen Austin-Li, Erica Reid We’re excited to share their work with you!

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · Aug 1

We are open for submission to our anthology! 🎉 Check out our website to learn more. milkandcakepress.com/dead-of-wint...

Image: Close up photo of tree bark with a faint orange square on top to make the text more readable. Text: Milk & Cake Press is now open from Aug 1st - Aug 31th for submission for our biennial anthology Dead of Winter: Volume IV. We are looking for poems that deal with the mythological, the sublime, the mysteries of nature, the dark, or the uncanny of a long, cold winter. We aim to capture the feeling of the transition from the depths of winter toward spring. Submit 1-3 poems through Duosuma. There is no submission fee. For more details check our website or Duosuma listing.

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · Jul 24

Here’s another look at a poem from Cory Hutchinson-Reuss’ Triptych. Pick up your copy today!

milkandcakepress.com/product/trip...

Image: Photo at floor height of an uneven wooden plank floor with a brown, plaster wall in the background. Text: [convalescence/cohabitations] the peonies spread their white tissues slowly paperwhite paperwhite a bouquet of cells thousands of nodes graph the maples miniscule birds waiting to burst & fall through austere geometries & machine noise who is inside me & who is in the trees? I’m part sutures & glue, part bracelets from childhood braided friendship bracelets in black, aqua, & pink threaded morning & evening the fledglings fell from oaks & rafters we fed them with a dropper now the sky pales & the maples return someone to me as I sit in the driveway a daughter runs through the woods she draws out the trees’ avian natures she chants the names, she catches the feathers she must’ve glued one to my chest, I remember a tiny egg nestled there like a burr now a low relief, a plume, small, fading, tender like a young one sealed in loneliness but spring means the return of sensation & no excuses the flowers chirp show their white teeth to all the passing neighbors

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · Jul 17

Check out this poem from our latest release, Triptych, by Cory Hutchinson-Reuss. milkandcakepress.com/product/trip...

Image: A photo of an orange, rusted metal plate with a raised diamond-shaped, criss-cross pattern. Text: I Know a Man who Swallowed the Sky for RW He lives behind prison walls. When he was younger, he lived in the interlock of law and anger, banned from the prison with trees, driven inside, under ceiling, into the solitary eye. / A woman gave him a few seeds that another man had written in seclusion and prayer. The man I know ate the seeds, recognized them as his own kernel splitting open, wound into window, through which years later I see what’s possible. Transformation’s daily grit and the rhythms of being human with others: he carries a book and notepad, a brown sack of fruit. He says I love you to the men in hospice. Some curse him. He works. He chews gum and reads. His heart fibrillates. He stitches a parachute of blues. The past’s pure grain despair, cell fire, and needle’s eye. From his stories I learn I was born in the hospital where his friends took healing. Missouri boot. The river’s gospel, sweltering. We talk about the mysterious bind between divinity and humanity. That some aches never subside. / Finally allowed into the prison yard, he rested his face against his first tree in years, sealed in himself an image, an embrace of the moment that grows in widening arcs. In lungs, the branches, the branches through fences, through fences cloud, hovering like a hermitage where a man writes seeds in the rain. I eat them, too. They fall to the roots, sprout according to each person’s need. They break into a blue firmament, a heaven so free and irrevocable it hurts.

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · Jul 2

milkandcakepress.com/product/trip...
Alt text: Black and white print of a redwood log cross-section with visible tree rings and cut marks.

Triptych by Cory Hutchinson-Reuss

Triptych’s central concern is care: for the incarcerated, for the body, for the natural world. The richly descriptive poems in this collection mimic the three-part medieval paintings t…

milkandcakepress.com

Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · Jul 2

Now on sale by Cory Hutchinson-Reuss! Triptych's central concern is care: for the incarcerated, for the body, for the natural world. The result is a meditation on the relationship of self, society, and nature, yet one that resists easy answers.

Cover by: Jonathon Scharf

Black and white print of a redwood log cross-section with visible tree rings and cut marks.

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · Apr 16

Here is another excerpt from J.I. Kleinberg’s chapbook, Sleeping Lessons. Check it out- including some additional sneak peeks 👀 -in our store!

milkandcakepress.com/product/slee...

Image: Up close photo of the folds of a jean-like fabric edited to be a emerald green color. Text. iii. She taught me how to sleep – unplug the islands from the sea and turn tree branches inside out like sweater sleeves around their leaves, the color tucked between your sheets, the islands tossed aloft like stars, then listen to the snoring trees and harmonize. -J.I. Kleinberg

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · Apr 10

milkandcakepress.com/product/slee...

Sleeping Lessons by J.I. Kleinberg

Essentially one long poem, Sleeping Lessons uses a gentle, musical language and familiar, comfortable descriptions to create a lovely mood. The quiet quality of this little book makes it a pleasure…

milkandcakepress.com

Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · Apr 10

Here is an excerpt from our latest release, J.I. Kleinberg’s Sleeping Lessons. Pick up your copy today!

Alt Text: Image: Close up photo of a metal keyhole through which a vibrant landscape of mountains, river, and sky are visible. Text: xv. She taught me how to sleep –horizon’s hand a subtle sweep, the dust of worry brushed aside, each eyebrow arch a secret door into a tiny jeweler’s shop where gem-hued words are faceted, and meteor light embroidered into quilts of sapphire dreams. -J.I. Kleinberg

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · Mar 26

Come say Hi! 👋📚

Image: Photo of a foggy grey environment with a cluster of purple, trumpet-like flowers in the foreground. Text: Milk & Cake Press will be at AWP ‘25 in LA March 27-29 Come visit us in the book fair at table T1038 where we are sharing a table with Next Page Press. We will also be holding two book signings: Friday 11:00-11:30 Erin Elizabeth Smith Saturday 10-10:30 Kim Jacobs-Beck

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · Mar 19

Cover Art by Jonathon Scharf

Get your copy now: milkandcakepress.com/product/slee...

Alt Text: Image: Black and white linoleum cut of a full moon over big waves and stormy seas. Text: Sleeping Lessons J.I. Kleinberg

Sleeping Lessons by J.I. Kleinberg

Essentially one long poem, Sleeping Lessons uses a gentle, musical language and familiar, comfortable descriptions to create a lovely mood. The quiet quality of this little book makes it a pleasure…

milkandcakepress.com

Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · Mar 19

Sleeping Lessons by J.I. Kleinberg out now! Essentially one long poem, it uses a gentle, musical language and familiar, comfortable descriptions to create a lovely mood. The quiet quality of this little book makes it a pleasure to read and provides a kind of lullaby for an overstimulated world.

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · Feb 2

We are open for submissions again! 🤓📚 Please consider sharing your work with us.

Image: A photo of a small cluster of white snowdrop flowers blooming through snowy ground. Text: Milk & Cake Press is now open for poetry submissions! We are accepting chapbook manuscripts from February 1 - March 31. For more info visit our website or Duotrope. We accept submissions through Duosuma.

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · Jan 27

If you're in Cincinnati/NKY, come hear some lovely poets and check out a cool indie bookstore!

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Milk & Cake Press @milkandcakepress.bsky.social · Jan 18

Join us for a local reading at Indie NKY Bookstore’s brand new location!

Image: A photo of a wood panel wall. Text: Milk & Cake Reading Come join us for a reading featuring some of our local poets. Poets: Phoebe Reeves Kim Jacobs-Beck Bill Abbott Sara Moore Wagner Christen Kauffman & More Feb 1st 2-4 pm Indie NKY Bookstore 507 Sixth Ave Dayton KY 41074

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