I check my submittable ob-sess-ive-ly. OBSESSIVELY. Read: I have a problem. There is a journal I have submitted to many, many, many times. I watch them sit in my submittable queue as unread for months, because there are many thousands of other people who submit to this journal many, many times as well.

I usually know the exact day they finally start reading my submission, because of previously mentioned obsession with checking my submittable. The most recent submission, I had the time-of-opening down to within an hour.

They rejected it twenty minutes or so after they opened it. Crushed. Crushed! I have this image of an intern reading it and going “meh” (sort of akin to an okc message I got once after changing my profile picture, back in the dating days), and then pressing “reject” immediately. That is the best case scenario with that timely of a rejection. It could be they all sat around a table laughing at my audacity to submit to such a journal with my shoddy little poems. It could be the twenty minutes was filled with guffaws, or even vomiting.

Maybe not vomiting.

Anyway.

So I got the email and felt terrible, and stewed, and complained about it to Joe, how I had spent months on these poems and all they could give me were twenty or so minutes and a best case scenario “meh,” which is of course true, that is all they could give me given the many thousands of other people who submit to this journal many, many times as well.

That was a few days ago.

Today I called and subscribed to it. Which I know might seem scandalous to some purists reading and clutching their pearls aghast that I would submit to a journal without subscribing to it, but I only have so much money for poetry journals, and besides they have a prominent online section I stalk in between refreshing my submittable queue.

Anyway, I am feeling like a responsible, if crazy, member of the poetry community.

That is all.