Dear Editor,

It has been six months since I sent you my poem.
I’ve received not a word, not a ransom note,
not even a stanza cut off and sent as a threat.

Is my poem alive and well?
When it’s returned to me, will it have lost its baby fat,
appearing instead as wiry, muscular, concise?

Or has it undergone some metamorphosis,
a bird, perhaps, feathering its nest
with string and self-addressed stamped envelopes?

Has it ensconced itself in your in-box?
Has it transformed to sconces itself,
like those eerie ones in La Belle et Le Bète,

the gilt-coated arms that move with you
as you cross the room, shadows shifting,
changing the lighting of walls and words?

Send me some word, a photograph of it
holding yesterday’s newspaper.
A tape of it, reading itself back to me.

Even a rejection slip – you pick the format:
wrapped around a rock through my window,
letters cut and pasted from magazines.

Until then, I await the day when
it appears, smiling wanly at my doorstep,
or singing choruses to the world on your page.

03/24/2002

Author's Note: [First published in ByLine Magazine, November 2002]

Posted on 03/24/2002
Copyright © 2024 Bruce W Niedt