Dear Karan, Justine, or Emily, Karolína, Svetlana etc. etc.,

Thank you for reading my work! I hope you're getting enough sleep and aren't pushing yourself too hard. I'm an assistant editor at Mid-American Review, and looking around at meetings, it seems that editors do a lot of the latter and not much of the former.

While this poem is related to my experience as an organism on a planet, my writing is often influenced by my experience as nonbinary and autistic. One of the most unfortunate symptoms of autism is an allergy to cover letters, but I'll try my best to give you an idea of my personality with a short bullet point list.

     -      I love bullet point lists.
     -      Last Halloween I taught my English class wearing a Transformers costume made of cardboard boxes.
     -      When I was 11, I was desperately hoping to grow a beard. It took me another 11 years to realize I may not be a woman.
     -      I was put on this Earth to keep it silly.
 
Anyways, this will undoubtedly be the first of many submissions I send your way. I love your format and mission. Knowing the poets I'm reading always adds color to their work, but lit mags don't make that easy. I hope someday I become Poet of the Week or Poem of the Month material, and by then I should be better at the cover letter thing.

Yours,

Jamie Manias

Only Poems Cover Letter

Jamie Manias is a poetry MFA candidate and instructor at Bowling Green State University, where they serve as an assistant editor for Mid-American Review. Living on the autism spectrum as a trans person informs their approach to their poetry, which has appeared and is forthcoming in Rat's Ass Review, Kingfisher, and Swamp Ape, among other publications. They can be found on Instagram at @jamiemanias.

Selected work