Chekhov’s gun, heavy and metallic: No metaphor.
Decoration, wall hanging, never meant to burst the room
with sound. I won’t be appreciated in my time.
I won’t be appreciated in another time. Play the set,
no encore. Only right answers, please. More
grammar lessons for my students. Bun my hair, pencil
my skirts. Poetry’s a phase and everyone who gave it up
in college was right. Move to the horizon
with the ship, everyone on the dock witnessing
my transformation from poet to dot. Change my name
to Jennifer, also a popular name the year I was born.
Dye my hair brown. Wave a black cloak and duck, poof.
***
Melissa Fite Johnson is the author of two full-length collections, most recently Green (Riot in Your Throat, 2021). Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Pleiades, HAD, and elsewhere. Melissa teaches high school English in Lawrence, KS, where she and her husband live with their dogs.
***
image: MM Kaufman
Rejection Letters 