Last week, I submitted two long poems to BPJ. The editors look at everything pretty much right away, and if they aren’t interested, they send it back–fast. Even less-than-24-hours fast. At first, this might sting–but it’s actually much better than waiting over a year and then never getting an actual rejection email, which happened with a different journal recently.

A week goes by and, honestly, my hopes are up. I’m waiting. I’m checking email frequently.

Then, for some reason, I decide to check through all of my online submissions–just in case some others have been rejected without a notice sent. And it turns out that my submission to BPJ never went through. It wasn’t listed. I thought I was sitting in the catbird seat and I wasn’t even in the ballpark.

I’ve now submitted my poems again, and I received the “we received your submission” email. I guess those messages are important.

Back to waiting–for acceptances and for tomatoes.

And in much better news…

While I play the waiting game, I’m checking the second proof of my book!

***Update***

I got the BPJ rejection notice this morning, with a nice note. And I’ve sent in my second round of corrections. Onward…

I feel like I’m playing a game of chicken. Over a year ago, I submitted some poems to a magazine–using their online submission manager. So I can check. The status still reads “received.”

Do I wait longer?

Do I flinch and click that withdraw button?

Added to the usual question (will they possibly accept one of my poems) is the question “Will they ever read my poems?”

The website says they’ve stopped taking new submissions so that they can get through their backlog. So I guess I should be patient. But a year?

Another magazine has had my poems for a year and has not responded to my email query. A third magazine has posted in a public forum that they’ve encountered delays but are now reading for a later issue. They’re a postal-mail operation, so who knows.

A couple of other places have had poems since October. One says the respond in five months, but they haven’t responded to my follow-up query.

We send our poems out into the world and they’re on their own out there, but I do expect a response. Maybe I’m old-fashioned? As an editor, I get behind. I’m behind right now. But I work on a quarterly journal, so I have to buck up and get caught up.

Maybe I’m just whining (this is starting to sound like whining).

How long before I flinch?