I am going to be sick.

Good God this is unhealthy, this waiting,
these feelings of doubt, nausia, worry.
It's that much harder to go about the daily business,
think about the daily things. I feel I'll be worthless
until I know for sure I'm good enough or not. So many questions-
did i send the right stories? Even since I wrote those, I feel
my new stuff is imporved, stronger, deeper, more meaningful,
more humorous. Will they even be able to see my potential
in the bits of work I sent? If I am not good enough, then what?
Push on, write on. More poetry, more fiction,
more living, which feeds both of these fires. Hope to
one day, indeed be good enough. But God, it
would be nice to get a little recognition, a little praise
for all the work and passion. I'm going to be sick for months.


An older one:

At my open upstairs window, I watch the
trees blow and feel the wind. It grows
cold my skin. A small yellow jacket
creeps up the crack where the window
shuts. His wings shutter, then still,
then shutter, then still again. But there is no
flight. He is going to die.

To stop the whipping wind who pounds away at
all my skin, with a strong arm
I bring the window down. The thick wooden
frame does not slow or skid at the small body of
yellow jacket, I don’t remember if I slowed,
or skidded- I just then left the thought to die.

Even with all the growing things
that happen to do it together,
touching, in the same garden,
from the same dirty earth, even though
there are squirrels in the house
deer toddling in the back,
nobody understands, nobody
understands the connections between
the sun, my anger, and these secondary things.

I never dreamed you, but here you are,
you existed before me, apart from me;
it was none of my doing. But still
you creep into my thoughts and affect me,
I want to tell you, I feel you are laughing
at me all the time. One day, you will
remember the wedding you are already thinking
of having, The whiteness of it all, the
churning of the warm late-spring air.
I don’t think you will remember my
absence at all. This is the affect I feel
I have on you, on the world today.