To the Mostly Spoken Word Self-Professed Rock Star Indie Press Who Chose My Manuscript 9th Out of Over 300 Others While the Top 8 Get Their Books Published (Not That I'm Bitter)

 

Maybe you think the last year in which I started submitting my poems and have
been published over 70 times in some of the hottest journals in the country was
just beginner’s luck and I’m due for a sophomore slump because if you added
up ALL your writers’ publications they wouldn’t occupy half the page of my
blog that links every one of those poems.

Did the fact I’m excelling in one of the top 5 MFA programs of its kind in the
country scare you off because you think academia is just one big hoop of preten-
tious acronyms to jump through and real writers sell themselves in coffee shops
and colleges relying on alliteration, similes, synonyms and assonance slamming
their way to success?

Am I not punk rock enough, too Latino, undertatted, not Latino enough, not in-
your-facey the way you guys like to add letter y to the ends of nouns and
adjectives for shocky value, too reliant on hands that hold my words because my
memorycan only recall sunsets that mean something?

Or am I just not what you’re looking for, a streetcorner introverted writing
whore who simply doesn’t know how to sell himself.