My last rejection letter followed form
telling me
“this isn’t quite what we’re looking for.”
He went on to say
“as you point out in one of your poems,
never give up”
as if he could make me feel better
by hoisting me
on the petard of my own words.
I should have left out the smaltzy shit.
(a word I learned from Anna Russell)
smaltzy, that is

The poem to which he referred
was on page sixty three.
I wonder how the son of a bitch
was able to get through
the other sixty two.

When I become famous
and he calls me to
Do Lunch

I’m going to tell him to
refer to page sixty three
of my ms.