The Algorithm's Mirror

Every winner sounds the same.

The literary journal celebrated a brilliant idea.

A fresh screening program would inspect all incoming poems, sniff out artificial language, then sweep impostors aside before an editor wasted a minute.

The announcement sounded heroic.

Fraud, everyone agreed, had finally met serious opposition.

Weeks passed.

Complaints came from the screening program.

Entries praised during editorial meetings looked suspiciously calculated. Gentle openings, well-timed turns, closing lines polished until resistance disappeared.

Messier work slipped through instead.

Sentences wandered. Images collided. Thoughts changed direction halfway through, forgot the destination, then discovered something unexpected.

Editors sighed.

"Too uneven," somebody shouted.

"It needs polishing."

The rough poem disappeared into the rejection pile.

The polished poem moved forward.

Every winner sounds the same.

Reports continued piling higher.

Nobody could explain why the screening program kept disagreeing with the editorial board.

The machine-written poems resembled the selections already filling past issues. Human writers carried rough corners, awkward leaps, detours, and ideas refusing tidy shapes.

Editorial meetings grew shorter.

Marketing loved consistency.

Subscribers praised elegance.

Awards followed.

Changing course suddenly felt dangerous.

Someone finally shrugged.

"Increase the sensitivity."

Approval spread around the table.

Months later, the winning poems shared the same graceful rhythm, the same carefully measured surprise, the same polished ending wearing a different title.

Outside those pages, an untidy submission laughed at its own mistakes, tripped over a clumsy line, then wandered into something nobody could predict.

The screening program approved it.

Editorial taste refused it.

Every winner sounds the same.