Foot Content

Posting tenacity on main (new poem in The Shore)

I have a new poem, “Foot Content,” out in Issue 24 of The Shore. Get “Foot Content” published was not on my 2024 bingo card at all, despite submitting it a bunch.

Other things not on my 2024 bingo card:

• The Taco Bell Mtn Dew Baja Blast gelato

• Luigi etc.

• The cat who lives in the gutter starting to sleep on our patio every morning!!!!!!!

• This sick Venom shirt

• Becoming a hardcore fan of [TV show I won’t name because it’s too embarrassing even for me, but if you guess correctly I’ll tell you]

• Finally finding a way to pull off polka dots

This poem was harder to place than almost anything else I’ve published. “Hard to place” is a euphemism for “rejected a fuck ton.” Sometimes it also means “bad,” but only if you’re rational. This poem was declined 22 times, making it my second-most-rejected poem ever.¹

And like, I get it. The title is divisive and arguably gimmicky. The language is a chant-like deluge of text memes, TV references, commercial detritus, and film tropes. The content is foot. I understand.

A cheat sheet depicting about half of the references

On the other hand, it rules, so I’m happy—if a little surprised—it found a home with The Shore. I included “Foot Content” as an afterthought to round out the packet I was sending them. It didn’t seem like their cup of tea at all based on previous issues and my previous submissions to them. Shows what I know!

“Foot Content” started as a poem about picking things up with my feet and morphed into an echolalia-fever-dream-slash-ars-poetica. Tough sell when you put it that way. But I was thinking a lot about where art comes from, what it means to have a grip on reality or not, and this one time an ex-boyfriend told me I was tenacious.²

I also didn’t write down any of it until the end, which probably explains the incantationiness. It was fun to just mutter different pieces over and over until it all connected. Those suckers banged around in my head for days like gravel in a National Geographic Explorer Series Rock Tumbler.

I wanted one of these SOOOOOOOOOO bad

I don’t recommend always writing poems that way. This one was such a gestalt of other texts and super dependent on how specific words sounded together, so it worked. And that method is very on-theme for the poem now that I think about it. Repetition! Doggedness! Rotating stuff in your mind until it gets all sweaty and shiny! Art!!!!!

Anyway, please enjoy. And please tell me about your ugly, off-putting, super-rejected poems. Maybe we can swap ideas.

1. My #1 most-rejected poem is a persona poem as J.K. Rowling. I am still submitting it and believe in it deeply. If you have any leads, DM me.

2. This was probably a read.