poem of the day 05.13.09

atta boy

well
i just finished another
of a semi-famous poet’s books
and it was all right
he’s better than most these days
but the book had a lot of poems in it
concerning the semi-famous poet
receiving manuscripts in the mail
and in his email
and how all of those soliciting writers
were bad, hard-up,
and wasting his time with their words
and i couldn’t help
while reading those poems
and reading the book in its entirety
thinking back two years
when the semi-famous poet and i
were emailing each other
after i looked him up like a silly fan
and how it didn’t take this
semi-famous poet
more than two emails to ask
for my editor’s contact information
and how
on the next email after that
the semi-famous poet
sent me his manuscript to read
as if i wielded some authority
out there in the writing game
but what’s more than all of that
is the book that i just finished
is that manuscript two years later
bound and obviously with another press
that isn’t mine
and there’s the semi-famous poet
on the back of his book
looking like an old bruiser
with a good family name
just waiting to reject you
because that’s what poets do
when they get one leg up on each other
as we, the rest of the crabs in the pot
try to pull them back down
with bad reviews and poems like this.