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.