Jump in the Pool

I got an acceptance in the mail today from The Cincinnati Review, which I was thrilled about until I read that they wanted the poem Passages North previously accepted. I had emailed them, but this isn't the first time something like this has happened; sometimes emails get lost or deleted. I do keep good records, which is something on which I pride myself. None of the other poems in the batch have been accepted yet, so hopefully the editor will be willing to take a second look, since he did say he liked the rest of the poems too. If not, though, I'll keep sending. I like The Cincinnati Review a lot.

The thing is: the aforementioned poem I was thinking about ditching and not even putting in the batch I sent to those journals and others. It's a really weird and bizarre poem, and I thought maybe it didn't have a place to even be considered for submission. It clearly goes to show how much I know about my own work. Then again, I have a feeling the folks I trust with seeing drafts would've said, "What the hell is this?"

Then I got home from the store to a Hollins Critic e-mail acceptance, which was funny and welcomed considering the former events. It's also a newer Nocturne, if you can call it that, because I think most of the time I really don't know what a Nocturne is. But a semblance or seedling of a new manuscript I think keeps growing slowly, because I'm starting to recognize some similarities, and though the poems seem to be linked, they certainly don't belong in the first manuscript that's currently out all over the place at contests. I think that's a good sign. At least new poems are being written, and that's always a good thing.

At the store I was also greeted by a bigger guy who smiled at me and said hello. At first I was confused, but then I realized it was a guy who used to live mostly in the street near my old apartment a few years ago. He had these two vans and a car, and would always be working on them, and his car would be filled with empty Natural Light packages, and he'd usually be sitting in the front seat of the car if he wasn't working on the vans: batteries and wires and tools strewn all over the place. I always said hello to him when I was walking somewhere, and I can't believe he recognized me, but then again I end up recognizing people I don't even know and have never met at places like AWP, just from a photo on the back cover a book sometimes. I remember faces. Apparently he does too.