Unlike my first month on duty, which was September 2012, this month's exercise was, to say the least, manic. Last time, I saw just under 200 submissions; this time, I saw at least 300. Given that we're still facing a backlog of accepted poems, our next thinning tactic, rather than a month's closure (as we did for December 2012), will be to break the rest of this year up into two-month reading periods. Therefore, my next reading period will be June/July 2013 (February/March and April/May belong to my co-editors respectively, although I'm not sure in which order; I believe it's Romie and then Sonya). The tough part for us will be limiting ourselves to six poems per two-month reading period for the rest of the year, but we hope we'll be able to return to a more settled pattern after 2013 is out.

My acceptances for this month, just as I have previously announced:

"Slouching Towards the Garden," by Margarita Tenser

"Triptych," by Jane Crowley

"St. Patrick and the Snakes," by Jane Yolen

"The Loss," by Mari Ness

"Counterpart," by Stefanie Maclin

"Sand Bags," by Dominik Parisien

Of my September acceptances, I'm very pleased to say that one of them has been already been published in a recent update to the Strange Horizons website; you can find Crystal Hoffman's "Heat and Sainthood" here. The next one from September's batch that'll be published is M. S. Burtenshaw's "Schrödinger's Tree"; by our current rota, it should be published on March 18th, so keep an eye out for that marvelous piece, too.