in past poems
i shared how i wanted to be a poet
and how i failed upward
and finally published
books that sold
now i’ll tell how i went to NY city
located an office in the rich part of the city
that furnished mail forwarding
& telephone answering service
i lived in a cheap well known hotel
i used this NY city address for
my poetry books publishing office
i used this address so people throughout
the world would think i lived and wrote in NY
i found printers that could print my books
at a very inexpensive price
and i wrote several poetry books under pen names
sold thousands upon thousands of books
by pen names i won’t reveal yet
i also had another company using my real name
which i operated from louisville, kentucky
i also sold thousands of books
to readers who wrote to me in louisville
but there was glamor to using pen names
and a New York address
with an important sounding
publishing house name
i often thought
readers would not buy my poetry books
if they knew i wrote them,
me being a guy from louisville, kentucky?
no i thought
i had to be a guy from NY city
with poetic sounding pen names
i think i sold many
more books
that way
but don’t know for sure
who would buy poetry books
by some guy in louisville?
many readers came to NY city
to meet me
and discovered i was not there
the office manager would say
i was out of town,
or i had just left for Greece
or England
or Sweden
to work with another poet
on a new book
that’s the way i rolled
and now you know
why i could never have lunch
or dinner or a
late night’s evening with you
in NY city
but maybe
another day
or night
we can
spend together
over a candle lit dinner
By Jim Wortham (July 4, 2022)
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