The biggest regrets of my literary life
Are not the rejections
Where I could have maybe slightly
Improved nearly impossible odds
With a little more effort or polish.

The biggest regrets are
Gone and buried literary journals
I felt a kinship with
But never mustered the fortitude
To submit to.

While in college,
I should have sent poems or short stories
To Canvas, Bathtub Gin, and a host of
Other ephemeral publications
That have since shuffled off this mortal coil.

I feared I wasn't ready.
Only later I learned
You're never ready,
You just have to plunge off that cliff.
You have have to find the courage to hit "send."