Overheated


Back from the ashes like a phoenix
company.  Promises not worth the paper.
The regulator sighs, it’s overheated.

They say accounts because
everyone recalls it differently.
There is no auditor.

Cash is taught by insolvency.
When the buck stops
we are what we consent to.

Subordination is a common arrangement.
In a liquidation we ask
whose promise was bigger?

Amy Crutchfield

Amy Crutchfield’s poems have been published in journals including Island, foam:e, Stilts, APJ, Westerly and The Poetry Review. In 2020/21 she won the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize. Her first collection, “The Cyprian”, will be published by Giramondo in September.

More by Amy Crutchfield ›

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