My Fragile Condition
In my glory days,
I’d get rejections
from all the best journals.
Once or twice there was
even a penned note
from some assistant
to the assistant editor,
hinting at how close
I had nearly come.
These days, I am rejected
by the mundane
poem-shops I have hardly
the heart to apply to.
Soon, if I am not rescued
by approval, I fear
I will be penning rhymes
for Reader’s Digest1.
My fragility is nearly
palpable–it’s as if
my soul had developed
an interesting limp.
What is worse, I am ingesting
large quantities of adjectives,
which, like oversalted chips,
I must wash down
with gallons of poorly chosen verbs.
Perhaps,
(as we fragile souls will reason)
some regal poetry person
will refind my scribblings
at posterity, declare my
line breaks minor brilliance,
and calligraphate my name
upon a slim volume
of the best of my best.
Ah, such sweet success.
More likely,
in the library of my future,
I will occupy a kilobyte or two
between the megabytive writings
of Emily Dickinson and T.S. Eliot,
and be pulled up, if at all,
by the occasional errant keystroke.
1.Reader’s Digest does not accept poetry.