September 19, 2023

your poem can win $3,000 ** 

but you should know the list of entries is longer than all of the football fields
combined, and the judges are particular. If there’s a whiff of the ordinary 
in your work—say, a fried egg or a lost sock or loneliness—they’ll cleave you
from the pile. Imagine, your countless midnights and all the litterboxes
you emptied, and your dogged search for the adjective that would say it best.
Think of the salt you threw over your shoulder, the lines in the sidewalk 
you do-si-doed around, warming your hands over the fire of this one,
precious offering. A letter will come and maybe the pendulum will pause 
at your doorstep. But I want to live as if I’ll never have that kind of luck. I want
my feet to know the cracks. I want yards and yards and yards of adjectives.

** This is the subject line of an email I recently received