Issue Thirty-One - Winter 2018

Nesting

By Sarah Carleton

The mouse in our house is a rat,
lugging stale pita across the floor
like a shield,

slipping inside the stove
all scramble and scratch,
ignoring our Havahart trap.

She’s a cookie-crumb snatcher,
a crack-of-dawn raider,
a mad-rodent hausfrau,

a twisted bedmaker who
turns art to confetti
and scatters scat in fabric,

that shred-happy
ghost of nested futures
sent to gnaw our drywall to dust.

Copyright 2018 Carleton