the acceptance

you get an acceptance notice
in the mail.
we'd like to print your
poem, The Parents Below,
in an upcoming issue
of the new York magazine.
you begin to sweat
and walk around the house.
you tell no one.
you look at the poem again.
every word needs to be
changed,
the punctuation is horrible.
the topic bizarre and easily
misconstrued.
is that word spelled correctly.
how could you possibly
send such a bad poem out
into the world.
you hardly sleep that night.
you place the notice
on the nightstand
far away from the glass of wine.
weeks go by. months go by.
you browse the magazine
at the bookstore.
your poem never appears.
finally one day you open
up the obituaries in the new
York times
and you see his picture.
the editor who accepted
your poem has died.
you are saved.