Because it’s tax day, the assignment is to write a deadline poem. So I drew a little inspiration from E. E. Cummings’s “next to of course god america i” and strung together some incomplete phrases which played on both the standard definition of deadline and some alternative readings of the word and its roots. This is one that could use some expanding–there’s not enough here yet, but I’m also running on very limited sleep right now and have a class to run in twenty minutes.
Deadline
telephone’s out fish
aren’t biting every
other poem I write is
filled with I could use
another week or no
a day is all
you’ll wait at
the DMV will be
reported to the credit
I can’t get caught
telling this one
or she’ll kill me
Another Poem to Love 