Regarding publishing and so forth, I can't recommend enough Lawrence Block's Telling Lies for Fun and Profit (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0688132286/qid=1120071454/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/002-2319742-4858466?v=glance&s=books&n=507846), a very straightforward and practical approach to writing and publishing. I think I gave a copy to eredien ages ago, but in case it's gone the way books do, the quote in particular I'm thinking of here is:
When novice writers ask my advice about getting published, one point I can't emphasize too strongly is the importance of being absolutely relentless about submissions. Once you've got a story to the point where you think it's worth submitting, you must submit it and submit it and submit it until someone somewhere breaks down and buys it. Before this happens, you will very likely accumulate rejection slips sufficient to insulate an attic. Your collection may not represent any near misses, may not include any personal notes from eminent editors. You may not even experience the wee thrill of seeing Sorry hand-scrawled across the bottom of a printed slip.
Tough. If you really want to be in this silly business, you cannot let this sort of thing bother you. You paste the rejection slip on the wall or toss it in the wastebasket. You take the story out of the envelope it came back in and tuck it into a fresh one. You consult your records, see where it's been, then flip through Writer's Market and pick out a place where it hasn't been. And then you put it in the mail, and you repeat this process ad infinitum until the damn thing sells.
Over and over. Again and again. Relentlessly.
Personally, I suggest putting together a list of places you plan to submit your story, and then as rejections come in, just go down the list. It keeps you from going too crazy.
Here's (http://ralan.com/) my favorite submissions-listing site; you might want to consider the anthology markets, adult markets, and semipro and pro markets. Here's (http://www.duotrope.com/) a source of genre and mainstream markets, with some information (less up to date, often, than Ralan). Here's (http://users.california.com/~sarapeyton/litmags.html) a list of mainstream lit magazines. And here's (http://www.erotica-readers.com/ERA/G/Call_For_Submissions.htm) a list of submission calls for erotic fiction (both het and queer -- I mention the erotic fiction markets because often you don't need to submit actual softcore stuff, but rather sex-related fiction, which may be a nice place to send the poem you mentioned).
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Personally, I suggest putting together a list of places you plan to submit your story, and then as rejections come in, just go down the list. It keeps you from going too crazy.
Here's (http://ralan.com/) my favorite submissions-listing site; you might want to consider the anthology markets, adult markets, and semipro and pro markets. Here's (http://www.duotrope.com/) a source of genre and mainstream markets, with some information (less up to date, often, than Ralan). Here's (http://users.california.com/~sarapeyton/litmags.html) a list of mainstream lit magazines. And here's (http://www.erotica-readers.com/ERA/G/Call_For_Submissions.htm) a list of submission calls for erotic fiction (both het and queer -- I mention the erotic fiction markets because often you don't need to submit actual softcore stuff, but rather sex-related fiction, which may be a nice place to send the poem you mentioned).