how to impress the editors

i read a poem about a woman
dunking her hibiscus tea bag
in her steamed hot water as she
stewed about her cheating husband

and there’s one about making paella
and burning the frying pan heirloom
the poet’s dead grannie willed to her

and the ones about the unrest, the
rape of Gaia and the atrocities in
countries i can’t quite pronounce

i write like me..sometimes it sucks..
sometimes it lands

my old hippie friend told me to write
more ‘fuck poetry’ from when i was a
wayward slut shuffling my body downtown

i told him to leave me alone with the clouds
and the sky and the sea…it’s safer that way.