editing lessons

get a few pounds of
fresh shrimp, as big
as you can find,

the kind with the head
still on, and make a boil:
a commercial mix will do,

and drop in small potatoes,
carrots, celery ribs, fresh
green beans and corn,

whatever’s in the garden.
the shrimp go in last
and only need to cook

until they curl up.
pour out the boil,
put everything on

a giant platter
and sit around with
plates and beers.

when a shrimp is cool
enough to touch,
twist the head off,

hold the head above
your mouth,
squeeze

and suck out
the brain juices.
many like this
part best. when
done with a head
give it to a cat.

if you do not have a cat
but do this outdoors,
a cat will come.

now eat everything in sight.
pull off shrimp legs
and throw them in the grass,

and use a good
cocktail sauce, it’s best
to make your own.

start with tomato sauce,
or fresh tomatoes that
have gone too ripe:

add lemon juice, tabasco,
vinegar and a little
worcestershire,

and lots of horseradish.
if you don’t have
horseradish,

go back to the
beginning, and don’t
start.

these are directions
for editors. if you are
a writer, boil water:

directions for macaroni
and cheese are on the
box.

 

 

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Lyn Lifshin sends

me pounds of poetry
envelopes stuffed
to bursting
taped to hold it
all inside
for once
a long brown and red
Lifshin hair stuck
under the label
she used to change
the address on
one of them
note scrawled on
the envelope back
“it looks delicious”
stamps stuck on
in all directions
as if she’d been
in so much hurry
to get on from
there to the
next thing

 

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click to view

6 questions
poetry card published for mcn through
Smiling Dog Press - Maple City, MI

 

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Shipping & Receiving

I’ve been writing this stuff
and sending it out
for 30 years now,

since I was a teenager.
        I have a few of the old ones
I keep around, and oh, god.

        But some are still okay,
still manage to get themselves
published in

the little journals,
which seems to be the point,
to appear in the small press,

to keep your name in the
public eye, to keep going
out there with it,

out there over and over again.
        And some asshole in
Texas returns a full envelope

with a note, “there’s no
story here,” and a small town
Kansas twit marks up the poems,

like some mean and stupid teacher,
crossing out lines and
writing in pained, awful ones

he thinks are new.
        One woman in Michigan
accepted my poems,
then printed them with terrible
changes, her own idiot additions,
as though the poems didn’t

speak clearly enough, needed
a kick in the butt, required
the carefully unsaid stuck

back in, lame yet surprising,
like that last turd in the
morning toilet, that you were

sure had gone down, floating,
circling slowly.
        I keep sending it out,

not because I expect
some beautiful grandaughter
of Hemingway or Faulkner to

show up at my door one morning,
wake me to the news of
a major new find,

an important literary prize,
champagne and fresh-squeezed
orange juice, then money and

parties and talk shows.
Nobody cares about poetry.
        I keep sending it out

because it is the poetry
itself that wakes me
in the morning, my head

stuffed with it, cramping
to get out, and I
type it up, and send it
off to the freaks and the angels,
the idiots and the imposters and
the friends who publish

“the best we can find,”
because I can’t get truly
rid of it any other way.

        Because sending it out
is my only means to flush it
away, to make it go down,

to send it rolling or crawling
or sailing off to find the place
it was meant to go,

to stop it from spinning,
interminably circling,
and let me go on

with the morning, make toast,
brew a cup and
drink it down.

 

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photo courtesy cait collins - kent 1999

 

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because mcn knew i was a fan
• some bukstuff sent to me from
michael mc neilley •
*original envelope/the rest copies click to enlarge

 

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issue #35
the hold remembers michael mc neilley

 

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• Situational Reality •
McNeilley's latest book is available through Dream Horse Press, San Jose, CA or write
dbear@value.net

 

being the editor

don’t kid yourself
it’s no fun
being the editor

it’s no fun seeing
things this close up
through so many different
unfocused and astigmatic
other eyes

the poem with rape screaming
drunken puking and killing
all on half a page like
television on paper

the poem about nothing
        about me me me
tossed word salad
“new writing”
concrete poetry
        its feet in a washtub full

               visual poetry
        no better seen than heard
               shaped poetry
        like beating your swords
               into cowpies

what it is
is pure indulgence
the only purity in
the eternal me
in the effect upon
the eternal me
in internalization of the
existential me
in reflection of
the internal me
mirror of
        shit

it’s painful
what you go through for the few
        good ones

it’s a microcosm
of life
the shit sandwich
the fucking you get for
the fucking you take
all over again

but as the editor
you do get
kissed first

the poet writes
“I do know many of your
better-known authors,
personally,
and some of
the others,
as well”

        but somehow the talent
        failed to rub off

“I have published in
The New Yorker
and The Paris Review
and The New York Quarterly
and The Tablets of God”

        but you must not
        have sent them
        this pile of
               shit

“I have studied under
the channeled ghost of Dylan Thomas
graduated from the
Academy of Poetic Narcissism
kissed the feet of
Charles Bukowski

and given workshops
on Olympus
to the muses”

        and this
        constipated
        wordlabor
        is all
        I have
        to show
        for it

I am worthy
I am worthy
I am worthy

        you are worthy
        but your poetry
        this poetry
        this mailing
this submission
        spews

many honestly try
but simply cannot
or send their best
and it just doesn’t fit
        so little will fit

and it’s so difficult
to let these know
that while this connection
will not be made
someone hears
their voice
that they are at least
        heard
that they are in
the minority and
that they should read and try
again read and
try again

it is not that I am waiting
for the perfect fusion
it is not that I am waiting
for a ladder leading upward
it is not that I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
it is not that I am waiting
for a new Ray Carver

I am only even waiting
because the waiting is forced upon me
as I wade through all this
self indulgence
all this pretension
all this supercilious
nonsense

for the page
that speaks in a voice
all its own
and goes on to say
something

being the editor
sucks mostly
but I have to be the editor

        to get this done
then it has to be
impossible to impress me
I cannot publish bios
with poems to remember them by
it is the writing
only the writing that matters
yet so much of the writing
simply does not
matter
and so much of what is done
is done to
impress me

then the mail arrives
again and among the
fat franked official
university envelopes
with 3-color crests
among the embossed linen A-6 mailers
that grant unattainable titles like
        poet
in among the demands that
“this poem may only be printed
beneath this picture,
this picture may only be reproduced
above this poem”
among the tries that are not
honest tries the attempts that are not
best attempts
and the patently ingratiating
undisguised buttkissing

in one envelope
from some place like
Austin, Springfield or Monroe
rings a bell
the tone of
brilliant silence
flashes a light
that draws the moth of
fascination
but is not blinding
that ignites the
night and makes
        my day
then is forced itself
into waiting
to extend its reach to make
        the entire week
as nothing else comes
and more of the other
piles up ever higher
and we learn why
after a time
so often no one
not even the deserving
gets a real reply

        somebody always
        has to go and
        spoil it for
        the rest of us

meanwhile
        with patience
enough will come
to fill an issue
that hangs together
and then begins the harder part
than finding writers
the finding of
        readers

and while you may think otherwise
while it may seem that
it must be otherwise
it is no fun
being the editor

but if you can’t write
and you love writing
you have to do
something