Articles Extinction
On this tragic night when articles died
Few people noticed and nobody cried,
But as morning slowly got on its way,
Linguistic skies turned depressingly grey.
Words stuck in throats, sentences stumbled,
Grammar growled at syntax, idioms grumbled,
So that by time of evening floss
Mouths got sour with taste of loss.
“Oh, never mind,” polyglots said.
“Who cares if article creatures are dead.
Latin or Russian don’t deal with this scum.
Let’s conjure declensions — it’s gonna be fun.”
They started declining, but linguists prevailed,
“We’ve still got word order. You should be ashamed!”
Yet some shady writers were openly thrilled,
“No articles? Fine — less darlings to kill.”
As tensions grew higher, police intervened.
Declension leftovers were urgently cleaned.
Emergency measures strongly advised
To use “one” and “this” from strategic supplies.
And so life continued, largely unblemished.
Only scientists wondered why articles vanished.
Theories flourished, brilliant and lame,
But somehow nothing was ever quite same.
by Irena Pasvinter, first published in Slink Chunk Press
Editor’s Note: This delightful poem employs personification, meter, and rhyme to convey a clever story about grammar and linguistics. Writers find this sort of thing highly amusing.
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