SONTAG MAG
SONTAG MAG
Sontag Mag is a literary magazine publishing poetry, poetry-in-translation, and interviews triannually.
SUBMISSIONS
Sontag Mag accepts submissions of poetry and poetry-in-translation in January, May, and September.
FALL 2026
Columns at Sontag Mag are published triannually during the months of February to March, June to July, and October to November and include On the Diary by Anna Erre, In the Palm of the Erotic by Jenna Martínez, Alternate Address by Aanji Sin, and Off-Season by Sontag Mag Contributors.
FROM THE ARCHIVE
Navigating the Night
“I wonder if the black bear / I glimpsed earlier, roaming fields / of wildflowers, prowls now, seeking / a midnight feast.”
Dear Pine Forest II by Gustav Klimt,
“I never wanted children so naturally / I had them. All my daughter cells hate me. / All the places I’ve kissed bad men / have closed down.”
Amarys Dejai in Conversation with Chinese-American Writer and Filmmaker Haolun Xu
“I often write under the rule that poetry is best written as a way to document life both inside and outside of the poet.”
Durga’s Homecoming
“At the cusp of Ashtami and Navami, / the Goddess slays the Asura. In the fields, / corpses of adolescent girls sway / under the branches of peepul, / as gently as the flowering grass.”
Uncollected love letter (sunflower)
“People ask what i’ve been reading and i say the beats so they’ll go away bukowski might also work i / just want to walk with you not in some time warp but here where the trees break the sidewalk into / dips and precipices”
WINTER AND THE RIVER
“The stars look down / with neither discomfort / nor sympathy, / and the friends I had, / I now rarely see.”
How to disappear a heart
“Forget languages have meaning beyond the lines / you can see on the map. Bear in mind, a heart is a piece no one has / ever seen before, do not try to describe it, do not try to speechify the gaps.”
Blue Cheese
“Brought to life—say risen, say elevated, / also, shaped—by a number of organisms / the human eye could only desire to see.”
Uncollected love letter (bed)
“So i get near the end of The Odyssey where Penelope recognizes Odysseus because he knows the / story of their bed how he built it how she could never take it apart and move it even if she says it’s / gone it’s not gone the bed is still there after two decades”
Sisters of the Earth
“I have called the nymphs from heaven / who are happy to be ridden of Indra. / Tonight, we all friends will sleep together.”
The Soul is the Body’s Faith
“The body only connects us to each other / as much as the myth of the soul.”
Instructions
“If the birds have very little to say about the night before, turn on / the radio for song after song in a language you cannot replicate.”
Aquarium Blues
“My daughter called the whales / elephants and proclaimed that water / was just another version of grass. / She pressed her cheek against the barrier / between us and thought how dolphins / were too smart for the show”
Controlled Breathing
“Breathe in, hold, breathe — the eerie voice / of the CT scan guides me. He sounds / handsome, even debonair, just the thing / for contemplating mortality.”
Father Time is Cutting a Chili
“Seeds are kids playing Ring a Ring o’ Roses. / Placenta, capsaicin glands, and apex; / we are promised a wave, by brilliant crest / gathered onto land and at last broken.”
Meet the Sontag Team
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Asheley Nova Navarro
FOUNDING EDITOR
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Aiman Tahir Khan
ASSOCIATE POETRY EDITOR
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Aanji Sin
POETRY READER
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Aanya Mehta
POETRY READER
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Anna Erre
COLUMNIST
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Jai Michelle Louissen
POETRY READER
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Suzanne Claridge
POETRY READER
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Amarys Dejai
STAFF INTERVIEWER
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Rishi Janakiraman
STAFF REVIEWER
Sontag Mag Est. 2023
Sontag Mag is a literary magazine appearing triannually and devoted to fostering a community of poets and translators and promoting works exceptional in craft.