Nice try.

Are you a masochist?

Two poems that you've sent are utter drivel
and the third's romantic slop.

Your elegies are awful.
Why not write one for yourself?

Suicide, I think, could make your name.

The editors are pleased you have a sex-life,
but our readers, for the most part, we suspect,
are still alive.

The letter that you wrote
beats every poem that you sent.
Just don't send more.

If you were a carpenter
and made a chair the way
that you make poems,
you would get a lot of laughs.

We hate your poems.
If you send us more
we'll hate you too.

Send money? Yes, by all means.
Wreaths are dear.

A word, in time:
if Homer nods, you snore.

Stop it: you'll go blind.
We know you're deaf.

We cannot use your poems,
but we hope that you will place them somewhere else.

© Michael Sharkey