Dear Colleagues

I write this for the savage pleasure of
not having to defer to you, my co-authors;
you, to whom the well-crafted sentence is a
stranger, and from whom Track Changes
evokes a stream of consciousness
untroubled by syntax or sense. I salute
your index fingers, so eager to delete
anything that challenges your comprehension
or defies your mutilation. I respect the alacrity
with which my polished phrase is honored
as a lamp-post by a dog; I relish how each
pristine paragraph is but a white wall for your
spray-can-toting teenager. Dear Colleagues,
Herewith the eighteenth version of our paper;
I hope it meets with your approval, as
it has already been submitted.