Short letters.

Dear Postal Robot,

How I appreciate your ever-readiness, at all hours of the day or night. For instance, when I have a small submission to mail to the Futility Gods, I mean to a poetry-related venue. I need to mail it. I'm motivated to mail it because I had some poems rejected today. And it's the end of the day, it's the deadline, and today was such that no way would I see the Post Office in the light of day.

How lovely it is that you wait there, no matter my previous history of rejection, with your 'Touch to Start' screen, your helpful guidance step by step, your green light when the credit card reader has actually read the credit card. At the conclusion, when you so calmly and helpfully ask if the big postage sticker will fit on my envelope, and I say 'yes,' I kind of feel like you're my friend.

You're stalwart like that,

htms

***

Dear Crime Fiction Series,

I am not sure whether you're as good as I sometimes think you are, or whether I just want you to be. I like your Louisiana style, or at least I think I do. However, and in your defense, I do keep reading you, novel after novel.

You certainly are reliable,

htms

***

Dear Late Night Online Appointments,

After a night of you, I feel like you are pretty much a bridge too far, as a marker of my commitment to teaching. And I know, I have no one to blame but myself for not following the logic of listing an online course--that, paradoxically, requires consultations--to its obvious conclusion. Also, I feel a little bit like a virtuous martyr when I am there and the students show up in the chatroom and we talk about their drafts, and so forth. How in sync we are! What apt feedback! and whatnot.

I guess there's just, like, twelve more weeks of you. I feel kind of jacked up all the time, but twelve weeks won't kill me.

At least I think it won't,

htms

***

Dear Peach,

It's probably over-reaching to praise you as the best peach I ever ate. I'm not even sure that's true, or how, really, I would know that, exactly. How would I extract from memory my whole history of peach eating in such a way that I could accurately compare?

But while I was eating you, I certainly felt like you were the best peach ever, all the way to the very last bite.

htms