Acceptance: TORCH

Just checked my email and got this:

Thank you for submitting to TORCH: poetry, prose, and short stories by African American Women. Your poems “Compensation” and “Phenomenon: Little Black Girls in Circles” have been selected for publication in the Fall/Winter 2009 issue.

Shut. Up. TORCH! I haven't gotten to the point where I can quietly announce an acceptance, like as a sidenote on a longer more meaningful post. I think they call that humility or something lol. I don't know that I ever want to get that way about this particular thing. I hope acceptance always makes me wanna shout!

This is the first time I've had multiple poems taken and these were the first pieces I wrote in my MFA program...and I really wanted in TORCH. So that's how I'll remember this publication.

This is the part where I call my mom.

Bye!

This is my hard time.

I should say something here. That's the thought I've had for a few weeks. Well, I'm having significant personal struggles outside of my program. My son is having major issues adjusting. I breathe a deep sigh of relief every time I make it to class because just getting there is hard a lot of days. I'm so thankful, please don't get me wrong. But like Roethke says, "This is my hard time."

It's funny because even when things are outrageously difficult and I start to feel like maybe this thing is the thing that will be more than I can bear, I still stop and think (often lol), "I know there's a poem in this." It may come years from now, but it's definitely coming. And that is a sustaining hope.

So I still haven't reached the point of anything being more than I can bear, though I can't believe I'm still smiling, talking really loudly to people I love on the phone, milking my own corny jokes, and laughing from deep in my gut with my head thrown back and my mouth open wide. Either I'm magic or God is real (issues which are always up for contention in my world lol).

I really appreciate the love, support, understanding, and comraderie from all of you on the internet. You know how people say be nice because you could be entertaining angels or something like that. That's not what I'm saying lol. What I'm saying is that many of you don't realize you've been angels for me. Thank you.