#101 The Hidden State
ASSIGNMENT PURPOSE
"For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change." — Audre Lorde
In the Texas of 2026, the "Master’s House" has become increasingly visible through surveillance and the hollowing out of public discourse. We find ourselves in a moment where speaking directly can lead to erasure.
Texas Poetry Assignment invites submissions for a special new series titled "The Hidden State."
We are seeking poems that do not merely protest, but inhabit. We want poems that use the "Master’s Tools"—the cold, sterile registers of the institution—to build a "Hidden State" for the truths that can no longer safely reside in the public transcript.
The Challenge: Rhetorical Camouflage
We are looking for work that employs one of the following Four-Tiered Options to "house" a marginalized or "prohibited" narrative:
Tier 1: Environmental Camouflage – Use the language of Botany or Soil Science as a surrogate for human experience.
Tier 2: Historical Palimpsest – Mirror a modern crisis within the register of Property Deeds or Census Records.
Tier 3: Kinetic/Border Logs – Map identity and movement through the syntax of Transit Logs or Surveillance Metadata.
Tier 4: Bureaucratic Ciphers – Inhabit the cold register of the Audit, the Assessment, or Legislative Compliance.
“The Hidden State” Workshop
On Sunday, March 15, 2026, 6 - 8 pm CST, join Laurence Musgrove for a discussion of this assignment, the growth of state-sponsored surveillance and silencing, as well as the four-tiered strategies above, along with samples from each. More here on this workshop and access.
Submission Guidelines
The Poem: One poem (max 50 lines) that adopts a "compliant" technical or bureaucratic register as its primary skin.
The Lordean Key: Each submission must include a brief (150-word) "Key." This is your aesthetic and rhetorical justification: explain the "Heartbeat" (the truth) you are protecting and how the chosen tier functions as a defensive rhetorical act.
The Pilot: Selected poems will be published in TPA and will serve as primary evidence for a more extended call distributed to poets in other literary organizations in the state.
Deadline: April 15, 2026.
Poems will be published as accepted here.
HOW TO SUBMIT
Poetry submissions should be saved in Microsoft Word document format and composed in Times New Roman, 12-point font. They should be attached to an email addressed to editor@texaspoetryassignment.org and also include a brief cover letter and a 50-word biography within the body of the email.
BUY ME A COFFEE
This site charges no submission fees and is mostly run on coffee. You can buy me a cup here.
ACCEPTANCE AND PUBLICATION
Upon acceptance, poems will be published on the first Sunday of the month.
PUBLICATION RIGHTS
Writers will retain all rights to their work published on this site.
FORMAL INTERESTS
We are specifically interested in poems that demonstrate careful attention to the elements of shape, line, music, comparison, and balance, and especially how those choices contribute to the cooperative harmony of structure and sentiment in the poem.
Poems that do not meet these interests may be declined. For more on this perspective, see the five formal causes of beauty in poetry.
We also challenge you to consider new choices you might take in the audience and poetic form as they pertain to aspects of narrative perspective, shape, sound, repetition, and enjambment.
