???

we have to store it upstairs because it has to be where nobody can see it and it's really difficult to get it downstairs because it's also not allowed to touch the carpet and we have to, not because we literally have to but again because we're supposed to not be seen as much as possible, leave the house through an alley that's a tight squeeze and we're on top of a hill and j. is the one who has to carry it through all this and is only just physically able enough to operate it at the best of times never mind when he has just lugged it down the stairs so. the practical difficulty and physical pain and exertion is not worth it

i don't even feel bad about getting rejections per se. i think it's that i struggle to understand what journals/magazines mean when they talk about what they're looking for? except for things like 'no rhyme' or 'sonnets' i don't find often that what they say about what they publish, their vibe, what they're into, is illuminated for me by checking out their issues.

i think, that's a bunch of poems alright! i think, am i stupid? do i understand language at all if i can't even parse these submission guidelines because they use abstraction? why am i, a thing that can't understand language, assuming i can have something to say, lightly or seriously? i know it's not that serious! but

and it hurts my feelings the way that sex and violence sometimes come up in submission guidelines even when i'm pretty sure that a piece i'm submitting doesn't contain those things. it makes me sad, it puts me off, to see 'sexual assault' listed undifferentiated among bigotries, and confused when i recall poems about sexual violence from that same magazine.

what's a justifiable depiction or talking-about, and what is obviously unacceptable? what is pornographic? what is just for the sake of it? how do you know? how do they know?