Too many long words. Which is how I know

this is not my domain, that there are pages

never meant for my eyes, let alone pen. Yet old habits

 

are stubborn as writers under the knife.

How they cling to spectacle, to the heady crash

of five syllables rear-ending four,

 

all those Latinate caltrops strewn

across muddy syntax: Where did who

did what to whom? And jargon, which is what happens

 

when twilight is different for scientists.

To hard-edged evening searchlights, they affix

the rumpled softness of crepuscular;

 

no one else needs to. No one needs this, either,

but I have the editor's honest excuse: I am unkind

because I care. Because of those lanterns

 

of pictures in fog, always sharper

to their creator’s eye. Because suggestion succeeds.

Because edifices are admirable

 

whatever the cut of their suit;

because I am desperate for these stories

and yet the newsprint blurs and blurs.