THE NEW YORKER IS PUBLISHING MY POEM!
by David Kramer
I who wrote one poem in college thirty years ago,¹
Walked into a cemetery,
Lit my first cigarette in ten years,
And wrote a poem in my mind.
Lacking pen, I found a Starbucks,
Scrap paper and a black Sharpie.
Within fifteen minutes, finis.²
Taken from another person.
But who cares?
Then the letter.³
To be published in an upcoming issue.
A complete novice.
Absolutely unprecedented and unimaginable.
The luminaries who grace the pages
Of The New Yorker!
Friends and family for the rest of their lives
To be speechless.
The Department of English
In which I serve as an adjunct
To be dumbfounded.
I who never play the lottery,
Won the lottery.
The woman
Whose life I borrowed,
Who left me,
Will come back.
¹ The poem the narrator wrote in college could be “Providence, Summer 1989”
² The poem the narrator wrote in Starbucks could be “A Period of Mutually Agreed Upon Reflection”
³ The rejection letter David Kramer received from The New Yorker:
Dear David,
Thank you for submitting your poetry to The New Yorker. We regret that we are unable to carry your work in the magazine, but we are grateful for the opportunity to read and consider it.
Sincerely,
Paul Muldoon, Poetry Editor
Elisabeth Denison, Poetry Coordinator
David Kramer has a Ph.D in English and teach at Keuka College. Over the years, he has taught at Monroe Community College, the Rochester Institute of Technology and St. John Fisher College. Also a former but still active Fellow at the Nazareth College Center for Public History. David has published numerous Guest Essays, Letters, Book Reviews and Opinion pieces in the The New York Times, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the Buffalo News, the Providence Journal, the Messenger Post Newspapers, the Wedge, the Empty Closet, and the CITY. His site can be found at: https://talkerofthetown.com/
RUNDELANIA 