I just accidentally submitted a poem with a typo in it to Harvard Review.

Harvard Review. Sob.

And how’s your day going, LOL?

It’s fine. It’s fine. The typo was not, say, the word “poetry” spelled wrong. It was Sisyphus. Which, to be honest, I’m still not sure I can spell correctly. I keep flipping the “i” and “y.” Sigh. WHY DIDN’T I RUN SPELL CHECK??? 

Obviously, Harvard Review was a long shot anyway. But smh! 

In my defense, I was still a little fluttery from the day before, when Word Raccoon finally did the thing she’s been meaning to do for years: she went to an apple orchard.

Yes, she sat still in the little green wagon and let someone pull her past the sun-warmed bins of Galas and Honeycrisps and those weird knobbly ones that only old-timers know by name. 

She didn’t quite sit still, of course; Word Raccoon isn’t known for stillness, but she managed to hold the bag for the apples and pointed out flowers and yelled, “Look at that sky!”

It was the perfect day: sunny, crisp, and scented with apples. Naturally.

AND they sold cider slushes and WR downed one and gave herself a brain freeze TWICE in the process! 

Word Raccoon did not throw any rotten apples (this time), though she did pose beside a knobby apple tree and tried to make friends with a pumpkin. Both encounters went about as well as you’d expect.

(And there was no actual wagon. She only wished for one.) 

Yesterday I also received a very kind rejection from one of the first places I submitted a chapbook to, back in May.

It was personalized, saying though it wasn’t a winner, they had received thousands of entries and that this collection (mine) was close. Almost ready. (Which reminded us of what that one journal said about our one poem. So it feels good to know we’re getting there.)

They said to submit again in the future. 

Word Raccoon danced. 

(I actually did revise that chapbook a couple of weeks ago. But I submitted it right out of the gate as soon as it was written because I wasn’t keeping that hot lava living in my laptop without an outlet. LOL. Also, I had no idea if it was any good.)

So what does a creature do when she’s full of orchard air and typo regret?

She realizes it’s the end of the month and so those journals she’s been meaning to submit to? They’re closing to submissions soon. How did that happen!! 

She rushes to put together individualized packets of poetry, hand picked for journals. Which means she polishes poems she thought were already polished and now she’s like, this, now, here. NOW it’s right. 

She turns that hybrid poem that was a song/poem into an actual poem and bundles it with another band of freaks (she means that affectionately) and packs them off to a journal that will treat them gently, she hopes. 

She makes breakfast bagel sandwiches with leftover chicken and loses track of time as she encourages someone to “go, go” to his favorite music store so she won’t feel neglectful while she goes down the submission hole. She never means to be, but she can be so absorbed…

She hopes maybe you’ll go to your version of the orchard.
Maybe you’ll submit the thing, typo and all.
Maybe you’ll do something sublime of your own.

(Two neighborhood children are pulling weeds from the sidewalk in front of our house and placing them in a pot and one has a funnel. Help yourselves, friends. It’s so sweet and inexplicable; I’d love to ask what they’re doing but I wouldn’t dream of interrupting. Now they’ve found something fascinating in our brush pile, vines, and seem mesmerized by them, too.)

Anyway, that’s where Word Raccoon is today.
There’s a fresh Sagittarius apple in her paws and a poem in her teeth.

Her tastebuds are overwhelmed with taste testing an abundance of apples. 

She worried about the windfalls beneath the trees at the orchard yesterday. What will happen to them? She knows squirrels eat them, so maybe they won’t go to waste. Imagine letting those gorgeous beauties rot on the ground. 

What would those neighbor children do at the orchard? They’d have a ball with those windfalls, I bet.  (A third boy has joined them. Are they now officially a pack?) 

Word Raccoon adores apple trees. The family homestead in West Virginia had a few apple trees and when she first visited it after moving there from NJ, she was told they were trees her great-grandfather had planted. It seemed wrong to sink her teeth into one of the sour crab apples as she walked up the hill to the graveyard later and contemplated his grave, trying to reconcile this apple from a tree he had planted and yet there he was, gone. 

And she had never met him, but desperately wanted to know him. She was told he was stern, a preacher. His picture made him seem so, but grandpas always had a tender spot, if you looked for it. She was sure he’d have loved her, had she met him. Or she hoped he would have.

He had also played guitar. Most of the men in the family did. 

Even a couple of the women, or so photos she found later told her. 

WR wrote two poems last night, one of them that has no reason for being, and thus is only a vignette and it’s pretty but so what because it has no heart yet. It will keep. 

Titles: “She Cleans Up,” “Banana Split Rowboat,” and she found one tucked into another last night from the day before: “Cruising.”

Good grief! Is that the time? I think Word Raccoon needs lunch. Will she notice if I give her (more) leftover chicken, this time in a salad? 

Hey, I’ve submitted to five journals already today (counting HR and the typo, sigh) along with tweaking several poems. 

Leftover chicken on a salad it is, WR! Or an apple and a caramel rice cake. Your choice. 

(Footnote: it’s now back to two boys. One of the originals was called inside for lunch, I assume.)