How to Live Poem #3: 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.

"The Day after I Die" was originally published in Subject to Change and is republished here with the kind permission of the author.

The ALL Review is pleased to present our How to Live series, poems chosen to help readers navigate these difficult and rapidly changing times.