Submission by Paul Hostovsky

My submissions rhyme with 

my nocturnal emissions and maybe this is a guy thing but

when I send out my stuff

when I put my stuff out there

it feels like I’m sowing my seed

I mean it feels like I’m a burst dandelion

and each submission is attached to a pappus of fine hairs

like little parachutes in a wind-aided dispersal

of my stuff over long distances

and maybe this is conceited but

that’s the conceit that comes to mind

and I think I’d like to explore it a little further if you don’t mind

because dandelions produce their seeds asexually

which is exactly how I produce my submissions

which are sometimes outwardly obscene

and which do contain certain sexual overtones

but are nevertheless asexual by nature

which is to say I don’t have sex when I’m making them

though I do like to have sex after they’re done

because it’s in my nature 

and because making them is like compression

it’s like trying to compress all this pressure

into the simple figure of a leaf

a floret a tendril

and I need to release all that pressure

that’s pushing up through the taproot

when I’m done compressing it into something

that’s beautiful and true

and winged

and when I get one in there

when I get that acceptance letter it feels like love

it feels like a love letter and I read it over and over

and sniff it and lick it and put it in my buttonhole or hat

and pretty soon it starts to fade and to droop

and it goes to seed and it just goes to show

that everything is vanity after the seed

because it’s not about the seed dispersal

it’s about the seed production

it’s about the making of the stuff

not the putting the stuff out there

not the getting the stuff in there

and yet and yet and yet 

if you whisper your sweet acceptance in my ear baby

I’ll give you the best First North American Serial Rights you ever had

Paul Hostovsky’s poems appear and disappear simultaneously (Ta-da!) and have recently been sighted in those places where they pay you for your trouble with your own trouble doubled, and other people’s troubles thrown in, which never seem to him as great as his troubles, though he tries not to compare. He has no life and spends it with his poems, trying to perfect their perfect disappearances

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