The Myth of Wile E

Nothing's Perfect

The magazine's oven-aged pages were all brown and curled. As I turned them, they flaked apart—every article self-destructed while being read, like a secret message. Unlike my one-piece red pajamas, the premier issue of The Writing Bug would not be found in the natural history museum of the future.

Since the magazine was such a fleeting thing (as short-lived as squash blossoms), I thought its brief existence ought to be shared. So I sat in the doorway to the bathroom and read the whole thing out loud to the spider. I'd never suspected the spider of having any literary aspirations, but you never can tell. Maybe Charlotte A. Cavatica would have written more than a few adjectives like "terrific," "radiant," and "humble" if she'd known about rhyme and meter, or the thirty-six basic plots and how to create memorable protagonists.

When most of the magazine had crumbled away, all I had left were a few fragments from the back pages. Their incompleteness gave them an air of intrigue. It felt like they Meant Something, I guess because they were mostly made up of empty space, and as the saying goes, "Nothing is perfect." Evidently the closer something is to being nothing, the closer to perfect it is. I guess the only way something could be completely perfect is by not being at all.

With a pair of tweezers, I excavated a surviving fragment of The Writing Bug that bore the magic words "free to enter," and "big cash prizes," complete with enough exclamation points to prove they meant business. "Free!! Poetry Contest!!" much like "Free!! Bird Seed!!" is a sign you just don't see every day.

I got out the copies of my poems that kept coming back with thank-you notes, and lined them all up like the remnants of a battalion. There were fourteen copies in all—three of one, four of another, and seven of another. Once there had been fifteen copies of each, but these were the survivors. They were looking a bit battle-weary. They bore red scars that said things like "not for us" and "closed for submissions" and "you do realize this is a plumbers' trade journal?"

Nevertheless, scars or no, I was sure they were up to the task.

The Writing Bug cautioned, "Always send out fresh copies," but my seasoned veterans would just have to do.