Metal Rat
I want the ineradicable in the palm of my hand.
The tiny pinprick claws. Those fine-tooled wires of the face.
I want the engineers to have knocked up a prototype
that works like an uncleaned coffee machine,
each cup stronger than the one before. I want to cat
the rat and have the rat cat back, all the cheese-
filled traps to snap upon its neck and break.
If that’s what it takes. If that’s what it takes.
Feel free to pull up your stakes and move to a new home,
rat-free, rat-alone. But I need the pestering pest
behind the baseboard. The unasked-for exterminator
scrabbles at the kitchen table. It’s tough, he says, too close to call.
Paws dimple his clean-shaven cheeks. How much can you afford?
He sniffs his poison. Whose freedom are you asking for?
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
-ism
It is exhausting. You learn to live with it.
This is the country you were born into. This is the way it is.
These husks of civic duty. These masks dissolved to the bone beneath.
This hand over a mouth. Over a million mouths. Over
infinite mouths open for a scream so long in coming it sparked
the ancient seas to life. It is exhausting. This constant roar.
This constant pain. This constant fear. You learn to live with it.
We don’t see the problem. Fear like water
off a duck’s back. This cliché. This unsheddable caution.
Alone. No neighborhood is safe after dark. The key
in the crumpled fist. Fake numbers like business cards.
Call when you get home safe. Call when your home
is unsafe. It is exhausting. You are exhausted.
We said we’d learn to live with it. We are alive.
We have learned to sleep, unconcerned. This is how we die.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
Astonished
“What we commonly call being astonished is an excess of wonder which can never be otherwise than bad.” ~Rene Descartes
Every love has an end like an open stomach.
Remember our cat we found after two days lost
and how astonished we were she was dead,
gutted, and by a dog? A coyote? What loved her
more than us to make her a part of themselves?
Do you love me that much? There is no moon
and hasn’t been for a week, the night blind
with hunger. At dinner, we eat the bones
of whatever conversation we’d hoped to have.
If I touch your hand, I flinch at your bite.
Every love has a beginning, a mutual astonishing
like a magician’s tricks we can’t decipher
transforming fondness into love and we hate
that lack of understanding. Every love is a knot,
when cut, that turns into a healthy length of rope.
We aren’t every love. We aren’t even astonished.