Pay & Display
It’s on the dash—
the Constable knows how much longer I have,
I saw him pass by, look at what’s left,
count the minutes, hours, note that I’m in compliance.
I have a known quantity of time, unknown really,
since I lose track of days, months, years, even though
it is written. And I will stay on the street as long as I can,
or as long as it’s necessary to get the errands done.
It’s on the dash—
which stretches wide and vinyl, cushioned for head injury.
It won’t be a crash, though there’s no way of knowing,
and what I say often turns out to be wrong.
Anne Harding Woodworth is the author of six books of poetry with a seventh, Trouble, coming out in late 2020. Besides several appearances in the Innisfree Poetry Journal, her work is published and anthologized in print, as well as digitally, at home and abroad. Her quirky chapbook, The Last Gun, in the voice of the last gun on earth, won the COG Poetry Award, judged by A. Van Jordan. An excerpt from it was subsequently animated at http://www.cogzine.com/watch. She is a member of the Poetry Board at the Folger Shakespeare Library and on the Board of Governors of the Emily Dickinson Museum.
