Listen, I know everyone’s having a crap year, but I am just killing it, writer-style.
In March, I wrote a little poem. It was for a contest for Poesia, and you had to take a line from another poem and start your poem with that line. The other poem was Sophie Robinson’s “Art in America.” I chose the line “Honestly, I am sick of helping Jesus count the days…”
I won the contest.
Afterwards, I was surfing though Pinterest one day looking for pins for my development board for my next project, when I saw an old quote I have always loved. “A poem is never finished, only abandoned.” This is how I felt about my little Jesus poem. So, I went back. I deleted the first line so as not to be a plagiarizer, and then started writing. And I did not stop, for 12 pages.
But what to do with something too short to be a book and too long to be a regular submission? Ask Twitter, of course. Mention that you have just finished a long poem about smoking a joint with Jesus, and see who bites. And when they do, and they did, send them the poem and wait.
Then, one day, the email. I have an uncanny ability to know when I’m getting an acceptance. I can tell before I even open it. I’m a little bit psychic, which makes it very difficult to surprise me. I will admit I knew it was an acceptance before I clicked it open, I just didn’t know for what.
Me and Jesus on a Tuesday Afternoon.
That is the title of my poem, which Pen and Anvil Press will soon be offering in their chapbook catalogue. “Delightful” and “poignant,” she called it. I would use those words as well.
I rarely love something I write, but I loved this guy. I wrote it for my aunt Ka, who passed away several years ago, and I hope that if she is in her heaven, she can read it and understand me as the person I am now. I wrote it because I am a lapsed Catholic, but Jesus is still my homeboy.
Anyhoo, I have been added to the P&A queue and am awaiting further details. I have no other information at the moment, just the knowledge that my not-so-little poem is going somewhere special. And plenty of joy over the fact that I LIKE what I wrote. Genuinely 100% like it.
So rare, I tell you.
Ham 'N Eggs 