A Little Grammar is a Dangerous

Thing

By Daine Ackerman
Once life was all verbs—
Discover, marvel, write, l
You inhabit a land of pron
I, you, him, her, us, my,
Together we visit the past perfect’s
gentry - - all the haves and have-nots;
Endure the agitated conditional - -
What if, could have been, if only, otherwise
But the intense mood is
where
I really specialize - -
Do I employ or implore you?
And also the first-person
transcendental - -
Would that my spirit took
wing.
A word-slut, I’ll tense anything
that dangles or can be modified,
spinning dreams of a future perfect,
until I suffer delusions of candor
and become a misplaced aberrant.
An idea in aspic is a word.
We could dissect that image
over lunch, were it not for a cardinal
rule of analytical grammar:
never end a sentence with a proposition.
 So you’ll have to trust
that at the diner around the corner,
where the catch of the day is flu
and a poetic young waitress
rhymes her bell-like hips as she walks,
I’ve ordered you a café latte
and a double entendre to go.
A Little Grammar is a Dangerous
Thing

By Daine Ackerman