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
What happens in this world happens in gold,
the metal in our dreams that signals immortality
bright fame, undying fire, the hour dipped
Somehow, the two of us sit in a café
bordering the park. Its grass succumbs
again to chronic green, and I see,
there’s only one season under capitalism
spring
He assures me that my head “doesn’t look shaved”
when he sees evidence of my late teen unhappiness.
There are this many heads I want to break with this
I went to the liquor cabinet and filled my empty jar with a
bit of each, called it mayonnaise and began to sip, trying to
get caught for something other than this. My deeds are negligible
and death is strong. The rest comes easy.
I am writing from a place you have never been,
Where the trains don’t run, and planes
Don’t land, a place to the west,
This was our enemy with whom we
danced a half century
I told you the words to it oriole.
Now when an ear come
say it right.
who can
give these gifts back: Greek horses— Greek hatred
as the huge fish in one shimmering bound clears
the vault, eludes
grasp.