Note: I’d apologize for the title, but Metallica should know better. Any time a musician creates a song wherein a single word is presented independently and uniquely, the musician should expect people to use any other word with the same number of syllables in its place to make a relevant song about an occasion. “Battery” is one such song. “Goldfinger” is another, but not applicable in this case. Thank you. That is all.
So I got a rejection slip from a major east coast magazine yesterday. I won’t say which magazine; suffice to say the name is body of water + period of time. So I opened the self-addressed, stamped envelope postmarked Boston, Massachusetts, and I got the (new) stock rejection.
The envelope contained a new rejection slip — a different typeface and whatnot, so it’s new to my rejection slip collection, as well as my submission, a poem. If you think that makes me a wuss, you’re wrong; the fact that I own cats makes me the wuss. The poetry-writing only reinforces the felinity. How do you feel now, big man, now that you have reduced me to shameful tears?
However, my returned poem bore two interesting marks: a single hole, which would indicate a thumb tack (an even number of holes might indicate staples, and numerous holes might indicate dartboard, but a single hole is a thumb tack, definitely) and a lowercase v above the title.
Is it a good sign, that maybe it just missed the cut? A sign that an intern liked it and tacked it in his or her cubicle before returning it? What do these entrails mean?
I mean, aside from the fact that I now have to send a fresh copy of the piece to a different, as-yet-undetermined target and have to spend another $.74 on the damn thing.
