Must have SASE
 
by Zyskandar Jaimot

Would the New Yorker
  publish a poem
   by Charles Bukowski?
His words stained
 with the juice
  from strange excitements
His bubble still a bit off
 plumb from composing
  a California commune
    of racing forms that tout
a different family of poems
Full of drunky phrases
  and barhall floozies
Eager to engage
 in qwik sex where
  stale cigarette smells
   and spilt beer
pervade souls and clothes
Utilizing words like
 fuck and shit and spit
  to shock and hopefully
   arouse dumb pricks and cunts
    to understand
that they also create
Separate from illegitimate cousins
 once removed who are published
  in the more respected anthologies and zines
   now even online 24/7
Who strive to be thought of
 as great versifiers
  who call things worldly names
   as a way to hide
    their true selves
But then again
 significant novelty is rarely welcome
And what should a poem sound like?
As these better known bastards
 are convinced creativity is found
  in an impressive academic resume
These well thought-of instructors
 who obscure all feeling
  with sprinklings of foreign phrases
Never realizing a weltanschauung of names
 does not induce the spasms
  that give birth to poetry
Never to sense that it is
 the convulsions and rumblings
  of naked flesh which initiate poetic bodies
into uncontrollable passion
Never experiencing the arch of a spine
 adorned by sweat of anticipation
  before that instance when eyes close
   and pages or monitors are blank
    while breathless release streaks
     through veins until
 
eventual submission
 
For in that surrender to the written word
 whether it occurs on back of a square flimsy bar-napkin
  or on a limegreen phosphorescent display screen —
We commit ourselves to be gulled once again
 into reliving our painful rejections
Hoping that someone will see our worth
 while with moist lips
  we kiss gummy goodbyes
   to envelopes filled with fervor
As if in a dream
 which becomes our own torrent of delusion
Imagining we see our manuscripts
 drift through self-addressed
  stamped sibilance of mailstorms
   or returned with the click of a computer key
Only to fall in cold slushpiles
 of unsolicited metaphysical heaps
Which go unopened and unread
 at the feet of so-called prestigious editors
All of us obsessed and fixated
 from the son et lumiere
 of having a poem
  published in the New Yorker.