Every spring I hit the Housing Works Book Store, where there's a one day sale on literary mags. I bring a bag and proceed to circle the store, dropping publications into my receptacle. As much as I promise I will not overload, I can't help myself. I want to support the small press in this country, but I also see these as potential markets for my own work. I want to read what's out there, become familiar with the bright minds creating prose and poetry, art and intense thought. I want to be the best NY intellectual I can be.
Invariably I can barely lift the bag, as I trudge to the cafe section and begin sorting out which I will actually buy for $2 apiece, a huge savings. I came up with 12, at least as many rejected. But I have a full list of every single publication in that place and I vow to look up each one and submit something.
Every year the same thing happens. I lug the books home, put them in a corner and forget about my ambitions until the next year rolls around. Yes, I am a phony, but getting on that Path train with all those esoteric titles and noticing the admiring glances of passengers who assume I'm a literary professor, is worth all the trouble.
Their coffee costs more than the books.
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