Top 10 Possible Reasons why the editors of the Arkansas Literary Forum are rejecting your literary masterpiece:

10.  The voices in our heads are screaming, “No!”

9.     The monkeys overhead made a sorrowful noise.

8.     We have strong opinions around here—not necessarily intelligent and informed opinions, mind you, but strong ones nonetheless—and they did not favor your work.

7.     Just to be sure that we weren’t being too subjective, we tossed your work into a river to see if it would float.  It didn’t.

6.     In a dream, Moses the Editor came down from the mountain, holding out your manuscript, and smote us with his staff.

5.     We are convinced that, secretly, Seamus Heaney, Wislawa Szymborska, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Wole Soyinka, James Tate, and Carolyn Forché have some kind of Arkansas connection, and so we are saving space for them.

4.     We would prefer to plant a kiss, like a star, upon your forehead rather than publish you.

3.     Do we contradict ourselves?  Very well, then . . . we contradict ourselves!  We are large!  We contain multitudes!

2.     Because literature is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.

1.     But seriously, if we published this manuscript, this miraculous feat of language, we fear it would set a standard of unscalable heights and, therefore, we should never be able to publish anyone else.  Literature, as we know it, would cease to exist in the face of such splendor.  And, so, for the future, and for the children, we must say, “no.”

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