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A poet waxing prosaically on a writer’s blog says she never has more than three poems at a time waiting in the audition rooms of literary journals. I admire her restraint, and am chastised by it.

At all times I seem to have dozens of irons in what mostly turn out to be cold fires. She sends out scouts, I send out infantry. She is like a fly fisherwoman, while I throw dynamite into the pond. She treats her poems like jewels; my essays are stones in a catapult.

“Maybe you’re too forward,” cautions the hermit crab. “I always back in.”

“Good advice,” I say. “Besides, I would rather be spanked than slapped.”

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