The Rat

When I can’t write, I go in and play with the rat.

Come on darling.

I open the cage and pick him up under the arms,

loving him so much, though I am his jailer—

the little head strains forward,

the body hangs down till the budlike penis

emerges from the tender belly.

Come on, I say to him,

I’m taking a break;

I’m going to stop trying to find myself in poems.

Probably I’ll be having no more children

so when I look in his eyes, which are always clear and wet

like salmon roe

I say my son, all day, my son

and let him do all kinds of things:

put his whole head in my mouth,

eat crumbs in the bed,

shit in the laundry basket . . .

This is the bourgeois view of rats, that they are pleasure;

I have the rats of the poor in my attic—

hard for me to love them—

and the rats of the poor in my dreams,

in the barns of childhood,

eating the hot, closed milky ears of corn

till they are shot over and over,

until their magic skulls light up with flame . . .

Come on darling.

I hold the rat close, too close;

let him dig the pink commas of his claws

into my neck, lie for hours on my inadequate breast—

and then he starts this purring or clicking

such as must occur

at the center of the universe,

the sound acacias make when they split

their seeds on a hot day,

a tiny snap as what is dark and curved

twists into openness—