(LETTER;  TO A POETRY EDITOR)

     You may laugh at this
     or cry -- I don't know why
     but these are my babies:
     I have nurtured them as
     as dull orphans not in the mainstream
     (of what is literary, or proper,
     or cute), but as their naked
     bottoms and tops and middles and
     limbs have reached out, flailed
     with a hidden hope it has not
     all been years gone for useless.
 

     I may be wrong.  I may be right.
     Someone else may find them
     not just simple skeletons
     or patchy skins, some with their
     hair a little bald, others
     rich and shiny.  You may sneeze
     or ask please, "pass the kleenex"
     or the soup: surely
     it was not all just exercise
     to gain shape and gristle.
     Maybe I'm a dope.
     But what I do know you don't,
     and vice-versa.  A pile
     of words, and fractured verbs
     -- the view through a different
                    window.
 

     But here is all it is
     call it poetry or oats.
     Some clear as crystal and
     plain as kindergarten...
     others you wouldn't know
     if you met them: (hard
     as MacLeish, soft as McKuen,
     frightened as Sexton or Plath;
     whatever, even Sandburg had
     a hand in it) -- and you may wonder
     where is mine?      Read on.     Don't
                           faint.
     The little ones are now on a rampage.
     The adult ones getting mean as a goat.