Finding Poetry in Finance

Bankruptcy

-bank'rupt cy

is some alpha, mostly omega
in the world of figures
spreading on screens,
over newsprint,
into folders and files
and multi-digit cheques.

a stately brass piggy bank,
wreathed in binary numbers,
chained to a business-like
laminate desk
by a red plastic chain

begins to erupt,
its golden or green-white bowels
floating themselves
out a proverbial window,
conveniently nearby,
golden eagles and green Washingtons
diving into the final cy
of financial eternity —

a land of arrows pointing to hell
and red lines plunging to the x-axis
driven by a fateful gravity.

(Written for my Grade 11 English class, where we had to come up with a poem about a word; it was printed in the Spring 2003 issue of the Claremont Review — not the Claremont Review of Books, but the other one.)