hyundai for marilyn
The Day After I Die
by Marilyn L. Taylor
they will find the cure
for whatever got me,
and a unified theory
of physics will be announced
by a consortium
from M.I.T.
Following the funeral,
Earth will be contacted by
intelligent beings from
the Farquhar galaxy--
immediately after which
Hyundai will announce a car
that can run forever
on table scraps.
Within the week,
Abbott Labs will introduce
an age-reversing cream
on the very heels of
a morning-after diet pill
that tastes exactly
like a Cadbury’s Easter Egg.
Finally,
the woman they hire to clean
and fumigate my house
will come across a sheaf
of my old poems (tucked
optimistically inside a catalogue
from The Gap)
and turn them over to
her Thursday client, Billy Collins,
who (ignoring an infinitesimal twinge
of envy) will gallantly take charge
and see to everything--
including, of course,
any immortality.
~ first published in Shadows Like These (Wm. Caxton)
