Being half-Jewish, we do not accept submissions from people WHO (not THAT - "that" is for objects or cats; "who" for human being-type people) have married Palestinians and live in Canada!!! That is our in-house editorial policy. I apologize, but some things are the law, and since this is very high up on our list of submission-related laws, albeit a concealed one we do not post on our guidelines, we can't offer to post this submission. If you were a real transvestite married to an Israeli or even to a Hawaiian or anyone like that, that would be cool, and we would gladly accept it, as long as the words "that" and "who" were exchanged when necessary. But as it is, you are a Canadian resident married to a Palestinian and so, harboring as we do a weird antipathy for your type (as well as Connecticut residents married to Romanians, California residents married to Austrians, and Mexican residents married to Lithuanians), we can only apologize and hope that your submission finds an appropriate home.

Eyeshot's Anti-Canadian/Palestinian-Lover Brigade

Thanks for sending this! It starts out well and is very smooth and nicely written, but I think it's better off for print than the web. Or if you're a huge e-lit enthusiast and all, then it's probably better off on a site that's a little more traditional than Eyeshot. I might have missed them, but I don't think there were any talking animals in this one, nor were there clouds that ejaculate bluebirds and redbirds and hummingbirds, no highways suddenly deciding to take to the skies, no allusions to bad TV or good literature, no unpronouncable words, not nearly enough three-letter words, and not nearly enough words that stand for colors that look like sounds that sound like smells etc. By which I mean I think this story is good and would be happier if its final resting place were a little saner than one of the slots reserved for silliness over at the ole Eyeshot. But thanks again for submitting and please send something else whenever.

Eyeshot's Pre-Conception Fatality

I really like how this started out and I liked the pace and dialogue of it and was cool with the racial thing and all. But then the story just sort of dissolved - like you set up something, but then it sort of disappeared. I'd suggest you work on this a while and maybe see why you wanted to write and see how those characters you set up and the great tension of the dad's mowing of the backyard would play out over time. Anyway, again, I really like the way it started, but then it seemed like you were thinking more about restricting word count than expanding the story.

Why are almost all of your paragraphs the same size? Anyway - this is too long for me to read right now. I started it and didn't really get hooked by the graduation cap and then there may have been wonderful moments in the story toward the end but I'd've prefer if you were the one who excavated them, polished them off, then sent them in. I ain't no literary archealogist, girlfriend, and it seems this story is like an ancient city covered in dirt - so as Jay-Z say, go on brush your shoulder off, by which I mean, clarify, purify, clean, cut, condense, make pretty for tourists.

The thing is you say you won't bother with credits and bios and all but then you go on and on and on about this and that and how you won't bother and so every word you write in the introductory note or cover letter or whatever colors the text one way or another and so we humbly advise you to be wary that that's what goes on on this side of the screen and we also proudly say that none of the aforementioned in any way influenced our reading of this submission, which we sort of liked, especially the beginning, but then once there's the frottage session on the train we stopped believing in it and though the writing is clear we had to sort of push our eyes on to the end that was in sight and so all we can say about this is that maybe if you integrated the first part into the second part and deleted all the paragraph breaks or many of them (we don't love that unnecessary formal cliche of online writing) then maybe the feeling that there's two stories here or there's backstory and then story or there's character intros and then story would just seem more like one story without the clear disconnect between the two parts. Whew. We apologize for the use of the royal we above and I apologize for everything and thank you for submitting and wish you luck with this and everything else forever after in the known universe and the next. 

People shit on your head for good reason . . . Lists like this were funny on Letterman in 1986, but then they were funny. This is not funny. Please rewrite this so each thing makes no sense at all and then resend it, please. You're trying to make sense. You're talking about cats. Talk about monkeys. And crack cocaine. Or talk about some rare breed of snake. You see: "#5 - Will stop rescuing stray baby sidewinder snakes from supermarket salad bar." Etc. Not that that's funny. But you understand. Ok? Sorry. Have fun. Relax. Smoke 'em if you got 'em. Love your neighbor. Live to send again.

When I see something involving the third grade, my eyes glaze over - I swear it! It's not your fault, nor mine - but my damned eyes! Send another one!

How can you call something Run Rabbit Run like the Updike book without the punctuation! Also, I suggest you never use the word maudlin again. I saw it in the thing you sent yesterday. Also, this is too crazy to post. I like the language's instinct but it's too all-over-the-place punny to give a shit about, I mean to concentrate on, to care to follow, and so it's not something to read but to look at. Maybe try refining a bit and using the rangy language (I like) to serve a clear story . . . Otherwise, the cats have been hunting down bunnies the last few days. The thing we've learned is that bunnies make noises, a crazy distress signal, like five high "ehnt-ehnt-ehnt-ehnt-ehnt" blasts and then are silent and all nose sniffling etc. Who knew? 

Sorry for the slow reply - this submission got trapped on my PC when I moved recently and I had trouble getting the old girl active. But thanks for submitting - I don't think this is right for Eyeshot - it's perfectly fine but I think you'll have better luck at other sites - it was maybe a bit too formally traditional for Eyeshot, to be a little more exact - I hate when places reject my shit and say "this wasn't right - good luck" and I realize that's exactly what I'm saying to you but at least I'm sort of throwing down a lot of words around it to show you that I care. The truth is that I'm an excruciatingly slow typist - the word "excruciatingly" just then took me 45 seconds to type, not nearly as long the second time because I copied/pasted the first instance - in fact, I am an exceedingly fast copier/paster - most of the words in this message were actually copied and pasted from other messages - it's just faster for me. I have arthritis and wear very heavy rings on my fingers for some stupid reason pertaining to avant-garde finger style. Anyway. Good luck in Croatia. Have you read Danilo Kis? 

Eyeshot's Garden, Ashes

Hi - thanks for sending these - I was able to read them all the way through and thought they read cleanly and interestingly. For Eyeshot, I don't think they're quite right, however. They're very, very, very close though. And I'm sure if I didn't have a ton of contributions ready to go right now  I would have accepted these. But having the luxury of being picky and therefore only accepting things that really wow me, I think I'll say thanks and sorry - I'm 100% sure you'll get these posted or published somewhere eventually  but I just sort of felt there was something about them that was -- for me in general as a reader and for Eyeshot in particular as a website -- a little too controlled and precise, didn't have quite enough air and space and pace and propulsion and improvisation to it. And after reading them  they dissapear a little. I mean, I can't remember them right now. A ghost-head tortoise? But then again I'm sick and overdosed on Nyquil last night! Anyway, again, despite what the last few lines say, I did like these and will gladly let you know that they're more interesting than most stuff I receive, and that half the time when people send stuff like this that's way more poorly done, I try to direct them so that they'll hopefully wind up doing something like what you sent. But I think I would have liked a little more vitality, looseness, vividness, for Eyeshot. So thanks again and sorry and good luck. Send more soon.

Thanks for sending something again! I tend not to post things like what you sent - the two involving children (2 of 4 or 5 out of a few hundred) I have posted are sort of strange. One involving dead clowns, the other wooly mammoths. Meaning they're sort of odd. The one you sent is well done and easy to get through and should be able to find a home somewhere, but I sort of try to post things that might not find a home so easily. 

Hi - I find it sort of amazing that a lady named Tiff would write this, more befittin' a Gretchen or Bathsayzebooloo or something. I mean, it's 
like the drunk intellectual girl of cloudsmoke on the bed in Kenzaburo Oe's A Personal Matter, but blond, and way American, and a little extra fleshy, and smoking candy cigs, and not nearly naked enough but well moisturized and therefore sort of clothed, sort of  Anyway - The instinct is liked a good deal by the website people but would be totally fully absolutely liked acceptancewise if you were to add a little 
more story other than the hum. But thanks and sorry and good luck.

Thanks for sending something again - I gave this one a fair shot, reading the first few paragraphs, thinking it started a lot like a story I wrote long ago that's accessible here so I'm sort of familiar with the dream/reality thing, but I didn't feel there was enough drive to propel me (the reader) down along the screen. You write well and you're obviously interested in what you're doing and you take it seriously, and so, I think I'd suggest for this piece that you also take the reader's attention seriously. The text is there, but it was hard, for me at least, to enter. I really like discursive stuff, but this didn't seem to have the necessary umph to pull it off. It was like it all led up to the revelation of the dream and once you got there, the dream didn't seem emphatically worth the wait. Sorry. But thanks for submitting and I hope you send something else, something that's maybe a little shorter with a little more explicit story.

Read Matt Klam's Sam the Cat - he does the same sort of thing you do, sort of, but in a way that seems a bit more artful and thereby lessens the blow of the ass talk etc. But thanks for submitting and good luck.