Frostwriting

Taking a Poetry Manuscript to the Post Office

by Laura L. Snyder

It took a month to get this group of twenty-four

poems into a cohesive manuscript. Thirty

late night screamings, bouts of brain freeze,

juggling and futzing with commas and line

breaks, Do I want “the” or “a?” on poems

I had considered done. Dang, it’s the years of work

they represent. Now it is 8:15 PM. (My printer went on the fritz!)

Today is the deadline. I’m at the airport post office,

the only place to mail late, standing in line

next to an older woman who smells. A guy, two back,

asks the air, How do you spell Natalie?

A girl in Carhartt’s, a flagger with a sunburn, answers.

The others nod their heads or look out the window

not wanting to get involved. Sheeze,

I must have reread those contest guidelines

umpteen times to make sure I jumped the rings

of Saturn the right way and it’s come down to this—

waiting in line with refugees, retirees,

and e-Bay shippers pushing stacks of boxes. My envelope

is hand addressed with italic calligraphy in India ink.

Who cares but me? Inside is the SASE postcard

(for notification of receipt) with a #10 SASE envelope

(for notification of their decision) and my personal check

made out for the twenty dollar reading fee. I’ve got all those

head scratching, it’s all junk moments clamped

with a metallic blue bulldog clip. I hand it

to the postal clerk and ask her to weight it.

She slaps on a label for an additional forty-seven cents

(She doesn’t know what it cost me) and tosses it,

sailing its plain manila-self into a canvas mail bin.

a canvas mail bin.