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
I write suicide notes in bed late at night
So they’ll know when I’m dead
That I was not insane, or worse, unkind.
Science was a walk in the woods
Where my neighbour's dad did his lecturing.
It was a tiny metal cannister, kept
But God gets away with it time and time again
And gets adored for doing it as well
Be one again, her crispen crystalline
Arithmetic raveled and riddled in Time,
Remembering that war, I’d near believe
We didn’t need the enemy, with whom
Our dark encounters were confused and few
For a saving grace, we didn’t see our dead,
Who rarely bothered coming home to die
But simply stayed away out there
A library with endless shelves: the halls
Receding into binding-lined allées.
And every book a life, hardbound and standing
A man says yes without knowing
how to decide even what the question is,
and is caught up, and then is carried along
Then I arrived at the capital, vaguely saturated
with fog and rain. What streets were those?
The garments of 1921 were breeding
Now this is it, said Death,
and as far as I could see
Death was looking at me.