Last night,

the editor looked through a pile of poems,

where mine hid, with a smear of mama’s anointing oil,

wrapped in the first prayer I mumbled after my last rejection.

(Is there even a thing as last rejection?

Is rejection not a long endless string,

A prayer bead writers only stop

fingering when Death hosts us)

I have watched many of my poems

return with a reverberating ‘no’

& have had to deal with losing yet another editor’s nod

But I never stop wishing I could go out,

& stand in the same way my poem went,

when it bade me farewell, as it set out

to a journal or magazine.

Don’t you wish you could hold your poem tightly,

plant a kiss on its sweaty dusty verses,

& welcome it home after each rejection?

Don’t you also wish that the return of

your poem was not as sudden

as the beep of a new email,

that you could actually watch it

walk back into your arms

so you can see it’s beauty

one more time?

Don’t you wish rejection

was just a word, you didn’t

have to spell with many

tear-stained smiles

& silent sighs?

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