October 2017
A former copywriter who found her true calling writing deathless advertising jingles for AM radio, I am also the former Poet Laureate of Wisconsin (2009 - 2010), and the author of six poetry collections, the most recent of which is titled Step on a Crack, (Kelsay Books, 2016). My work has appeared in many anthologies and journals, including Poetry, Able Muse, Light Poetry Journal, Mezzo Cammin, and Measure, and I also served for five years as a regular poetry columnist for The Writer magazine. I currently live in Madison, Wisconsin with my poet-husband Dave Scheler and an aging cat, where I continue to write, teach, and hobnob with some extraordinary poets who also call Wisconsin home.
The Day After I Die
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,
Tesla 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.
Originally published in Shadows Like These, Wm. Caxton, 2004
©2017 Marilyn L. Taylor
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