I HAVE MORE POEMS IN LANDFILLS THAN IN LIBRARIES

I locked myself inside my studio apartment with The Poet's Market. It was a steel cage match. Even the door made that heavy final steel sound when it closed. I spent the day marking up pages, a dog-ear here, an annotation there, as it rained outside. The place had only one window, tall and thin as an archer's perch, and it faced a brick courtyard that had once been a garden but was now only weeds. The rain hammered down. I went thru the book, cover to cover, marking off prospective publishers. Then I started typing up clean copies of my poems to submit. The Selectric buzzed and pinged. By the time I got to the cover letters and envelopes, it was dark. I went down to the corner for some tacos. The rain had slowed. People were beginning to venture outside. Lights were coming on in apartments. I went to my favorite bars, all of them, each of them, and ordered brands of whiskey I could not afford. I felt like a Duke or Count. Nobody noticed. I drank alone, as usual, then walked home. The next day I walked to the post office with the letters, twenty-five envelopes, each fat as a dove, and watched them fly down the chute.