Poetry Thursday: The Dead Line

Today’s Poetry Thursday topic had to do with clichés. I was not feeling inspired until this afternoon in class when I heard Daya telling one of her group members that they had to work hard on their Science project so they could meet the Wednesday deadline. “Dead?” Teya said, aghast. “You shouldn’t talk like that!” Daya tried to explain that it was a due date, but Teya wasn’t catching on. I started thinking about a dead line. It’s not a cliché, but it is interesting to think about the word derivation. Here’s my playful attempt at a poem.


The Dead Line

Lying jagged on the floor
panting for a last breath,
banished from the textbook
and its home between ray and segment

Who killed the line?

Vicious scissors
tasting the iron power of
breaking infinity?

Maybe it was the circle or curly-q
wishing for the length of an endless sidewalk
maybe the perpendicular line decapitated it
in a frazzled rush, maybe it was vehicular
manslaughter on the daily commute

And what do we do now?

A whole universe left with
curves
spirals
arcs—
even the chairs creak low
on saggy knees
light spines bow
like pinky
snail shells.

This avalanche of form—

the silence
as we press our cheeks
to the fading tile floor.