Wasn't There

Image of the Day:  The yellow leaves outside my work window lit up from the gorgeous and generous sun today. 

I have a poem here in Rogue Agent.  A Poetry Story:  that poem, "Girls Who Struggle," was previously accepted at another journal but when the issue came out in which it was supposed to appear, it wasn't there.  So I emailed and the editor said he'd "look into it" but nothing ever came of it.  So I withdrew it and sent it off to various other journals.  Rogue Agent took it and so I subsequently withdrew it from other places.  But then came an acceptance from another journal, who hadn't apparently gotten my withdrawal or had overlooked it or something.  I emailed them back and told them about the mistake and figured, well, they're gonna hate me and I can't submit there ever again.  But then yesterday, I got a very nice and understanding email from that journal, asking me to resubmit when they open. Phew! Very nice. So technically that poem has been accepted three (!) times!  I guess that makes up for some other rejections.   

Also, I had mentioned that one of my poems had been published with the wrong title.  Well, actually, they had told me in the acceptance letter that they had taken one poem with the title "Abandoned Girl at the Source of" but had published that title with the wrong poem associated with it.  So I just assumed that they had wanted to publish that poem ("Abandoned Girl Wants to Peel You Open").  Turns out, no.  They had somehow published the right title with the wrong poem and have now fixed it--thanks!--AND they are nominating it for a Pushcart Prize.  So that is mighty cool. 
So here is the right poem with the right title at the fabulous Amethyst Arsenic journal. 

And I'm being featured at The Sundress blog The Wardrobe's Best Dressed.  You can check out some poems from my chapbook The Ornithologist Poems here. 

The Marrow

There's a gleam to the trees and meadow
that verges on something heartsick;

convent quiet,
and rich as a jeweller's window.

Facing the lake-water is your bull.
He's concentrated and arcane,

his Dutch yellows make him look mild;
you think he sings to himself.

Like you, he seems to have had
a grasp of what it was to love.

What it is.
And he's lost it.

Michelle O'Sullivan