"my inane envelopes"

I'm just tucking into Denise Duhamel's KA-CHING!, which my public library system miraculously decided to purchase, and already I want to quote Duhamel's "eBay sonnets":


Pity my rough drafts, my false starts, my trade-
mark pink SASEs I was sure would catch
a big editor's attention. But batch
after batch of my poems came back with staid
"no thanks" notes in my inane envelopes.
I worked in a rare bookstore in Cambridge,
selling first editions and unabridged
collections of Alexander Pope,
which made me think longevity was creepy—
some poets relegated to bargain bins
while other poets were like mannequins,
modeling their in-vogue verse obliquely
from their famous graves. I was twenty-one.
I worshipped every poet's skeleton.


Mannequins! You can read eBay sonnets in full at Verse Daily.