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Reports from a Small Press Burnout: My Most Beautiful Fan
My wife is from Mexico and can barely speak or read in English but she loves it when I get a poetry journal contributor’s copy in the mail.
She first looks at the cover. If it is a nature photo she will say, “Que bonita.”
If it’s a picture or drawing of someone’s middle finger, she will say, “Hmmm.”
Then she goes to the back for the contributor’s notes. If there is a photo of me she says, “There you are!”
If there is no photo, she frowns.
“Why no photo?” she asks.
“I don’t know, mi amor.”
Then she looks my name up in the contents, her slim brown sexy finger going down….finds the page number.
She reads my poem, slowly, carefully, to herself, or sometimes out loud. I love the sound of her voice. She asks me about certain words. She gives small laughs and sighs. If the poem is about her, which they often are, she sometimes cries.
When she finishes, she kisses me and says, “My gringo guapo, te amo.”
She never asks me how much I got paid for my poem. Or how big of a circulation the journal has. Or what it all means. She seems to understand.
