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Camellia Paul

A Love Letter to Our Poets

The Love Issue continues, this time in a volume devoted entirely to poetry—a love letter to (or perhaps from) our poets.

At Neon & Smoke, we are drawn to work that lives in the body, poems that don’t just explore emotion, but inhabit it. These pieces move through love, lust, longing, and losing, each offering a glimpse into what it means to be human.

What it means to feel.

To ache. To want. To remember. To become.

We wish we could have included every gorgeous poem that found its way to us. Space, not desire, kept us from doing so. But we hope these poems, these odes to being alive, stay with you. That they settle somewhere in your chest, your memory, your pulse.

This month, we are especially honored to feature two emerging artists: Canton Mackan and Marcela Maldonado who graciously shared their powerful works.

We hope you spend some time with their love letters.

Our doors for poetry are still open.

The theme? Dopamine Hits.

If it intoxicates your body, your thoughts, your behavior, we want it. Bring us obsession, craving, pleasure, fixation. The things you can’t quite shake.

A special shoutout to all the emerging artists who continue to trust us with their work. We see you. And to our international poets who have found a home here with us.

Your words matter. We are honored every time you choose to share them.

April brings something new: our first anthology. We can’t wait to share it with you.

Until then, we wish you energy, resilience, and a little bit of light as you move through life, love, and sometimes the blues.

To the Neon & Smoke family,

With love,
T & J

New Artist Spotlight

This month, we are honored to feature two emerging artists, Canton Mackan and Marcela Maldonado. Their work brings depth and resonance to this issue, and we are proud to share their voices in the Smoke.

Marcela Maldonado

Canton Mackan

Step into the Smoke

Where the Glow Meets the Haze

Flash Fiction

We publish bold, layered flash fiction—stories that move, that mean, and that linger. We welcome all genres, as long as there’s emotional resonance, narrative stakes, and a voice that leaves a mark. Surprise us.

Digital Art

Each issue, we feature a curated selection of digital art around a central theme. This time, it’s People Like Us—a call for visual storytelling that explores identity, intimacy, kinship, difference, and the quiet (or loud) ways we gather, resist, and belong. Think vibrant, strange, layered, raw. Interpretation is welcome—we want to feel something.

Poetry

We’re looking for poems that pulse with energy, voice, and emotional honesty. For this issue, we invite work that engages with the theme Ritual—daily or divine, inherited or invented, personal or shared. Whether lyrical or narrative, formal or experimental, send us poems that break and mend, that think and feel, that earn their place.

Editor’s Light

What We Mean By “Half Genre / Always Lit”

At Neon & Smoke , we publish work that is half genre, always lit . Writers ask us what that means. I suppose it’s a reflection of how we see the world: most people, in real life, are hybrids. We are soft and hard. Tender and sharp. Holy and unholy. Poetry one minute and curse words the next. Horny but ashamed. We want connection and we want distance. We want safety and we flirt with danger. We are brave and terrified, loving and cruel, often in the same breath. Human being

We Write, We Grow

Remember when you first knew you wanted to be a writer? I was eight at the time. All of my friends wanted to be firemen and policemen. I wanted to write Batman comics. (Sometimes I still do.) Back then, I thought it was about the action. Now I know it’s about the words. We often say words have meaning. But they have more than meaning. They’re a kinetic force—able to cut, convince, and comfort. They linger. They travel. They land in places we may never see. As I’ve gotten old

Writing Can Be Lonely

Writing can be lonely. Not metaphorically lonely — literally lonely. It’s hours spent inside a mind no one else can access. It’s choosing silence when the world wants noise. It’s disappearing into a story only you can hear, only you can hold. Most days, it’s just you at a desk, trying to say something the way it deserves to be said. And even when you finally finish a piece, the loneliness doesn’t end. You send it to a friend, a partner, a writing group, hoping they’ll feel wh

Our Story Unfolded

Neon & Smoke is a home for bold, voice-driven fiction with emotional weight and narrative fire. We publish stories that don’t sit quietly—tales where the plot might thrill, chill, or make you laugh, but always reveals something deeper. We crave characters who leap off the page, language that crackles, and stories that blur the line between genre and literary not for the sake of novelty, but it’s the most honest way to tell the truth.

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