Adultery
I’d bang them out,
wine-drunk and excited,
and send them off
to magazines. I had
two lists;
ones which liked me
and ones I liked,
and I’d fire them
unedited
like a shotgun
scaring birds. each one
5 times
to 5
different places. then I’d wait
for any
to come back.
in general
it started with rejections;
someone would say
they didn’t like a poem
so I’d open the laptop file
and straighten its teeth again,
patch up the wounds and blacken its hair
like a dealer with a tired racehorse.
and send it again, somewhere else. it was pleasing
to do this
with my evenings – this mild commission
of poetic adultery.
eventually
one would be accepted
sometimes, but since at any time
five versions
were floating, often
it wasn’t the most recent one. then they’d print it,
happy with the words I’d replaced
and I’d smile
and hope the other versions
were bad enough
that no-one else would want them.
a note for any editors
considering this poem:
the exceptions, of course,
were the ones
I sent to you.
Author Bio: DS Maolalai
DS Maolalai has been nominated for Best of the Web and twice for the Pushcart Prize. His first collection, "Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden", was published in 2016 by the Encircle Press, with "Sad Havoc Among the Birds" forthcoming from Turas Press in 2019.