Poem of the Day
Study of Children
By Asha Futterman
did you know
that you all work for me?
I asked them as a joke
did you know
that you all work for me?
I asked them as a joke
My beloved Helios is leaving, see
how the hem of his robe slips from the tent
as Chaos’ daughter approaches, such
The courtroom, clad in wood veneer,
could be a lesser pharaoh’s tomb
equipped for immortality.
I made this up from nothing.
It’s not myself I sing,
or love, or anything
Sifu John has left the dojo
and struck out on his own.
No more shit from Master Jong,
The narrow cell contains a bunk,
steel desk mounted on the wall,
toilet, sink, and television;
Not days of anger
but days of irritation,
light through dirty glass,
Give me that! Give me that!
Okay, go and get it.
She fell
In a loft facing a parking lot
on a main drag of the tired
southend, lives my friend
In the beginning of my love wild hearts and trees. Greenness. The waves
at the end of the street. Dynamite proposals. To be a man,
or a white thing crawling through nuns’ dreams. In
Of course it’s a poem no man could withstand, all that forbidding power
Of the glance and the long sweetness of the slow analysis,
Sweetness that drew him:
into the gristle of seeds,