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
Snow is falling on Broadway
Through weeping willows of fog.
I know that my Redeemer liveth
I’m a stallion standing in my stable stall asleep.
Horses do that and their standing sleep is deep.
A woman with a whip waits for me to wake
At seventy-seven I reached my prime.
But seventy-eight was also absolutely great.
And then came fab seventy-nine and continuing to climb.
Plop the live lobster into boiling water and let it scream.
You both turn red.
Of course you have to eat it dead.
I’m from St. Louis and Budweiser.
I’m from the Seidel Coal and Coke Company and the Mississippi.
I’m from the old streets near Forest Park,
He has a lazy father in Minnesota.
I hope you never have to do this in life, with its crazy little darkened
rooms. People are standing, an accurate jumble. Famille rose happy campers.
We talked about the great error
that you can live with
and really can’t afford to get.
Did he describe the blue stripe again,
unelected governor?
And from trees to hospitals, one story
I meant to wake up and had or had not
To the lines from an ordinary song
I saw my problem as that line
My voice carries further, almost
All the way to the face, I go
But not forth, or I went suspended