My rat has cried. I grabbed her in the cage next to a wooden monster chew.
Some how I've hurt her right there, and now she's running around with her saggy skin, her black eyes and her bleeding tail, and I, the sadist, who never wished for any hard times in their lives for any intelligent pet, I pray for a tail that'll never reappear. Yes, I wish for a tail for Zelda where her stump slithers away for my arrival
slipping her rat-like tail in disappointment.
Ai, I'll not admit it here on earth, of pulling the tail of a companion who was only hungry. Her disgust for me, after that of a dog without its trust, was the ugliness of a wench, bitter, with no more eagerness than was pulled for, with no complications: she always peed all over my sheets covering me full of her droplets or her gnawing, she never bit down against my mouth like curious rats scavenging for food.
No, my rat used to leer at me, begging me "the freedom I want", the care called to create an animal lover like me crave that, her a rat, I was pathetically codependent, but, without those ears so much cuter than mine, I'd keep on gasping at her with a glance that discovered, for me alone, all her selfish and scavenging life, always near Algernon, never asking her and taking everything.
Ai, how many nights have I spied her tail as she bounced around on the heads of the companions in the secluded corner of Investment One where the excited rats climbed the walls and my dumbo rat was stealing about all of the sustenance of the cage's supply: my curious thief, snuffling around with her pointed nose buried down, bowl to hide "without the others' knowledge".
Selfish, selfish, selfish, as naturally prey know how to stay alive with only the anatomy of their faceless parent.
There are no tears for my rat who has cried, and we don't know and never did cling to each other.
So now she's out and I freed her, and that's all there is to it.
As I said in class, I really enjoyed this poem -- the mix of humor and dark themes works so well, and you do a good job of characterizing a rat (which seems like it would be challenging to do). A couple of suggestions: the poem is very conversational, but you could also start to think about the sounds of words together. And do you think you could come up with an equivalent for "Ai" that matches your voice better?
ReplyDeleteIn the second to last line, is "know" supposed to be "now"?
And did you want the word "about" here: "my dumbo rat was stealing about all of the sustenance of the cage's supply"?