Chop
Ella Zalon
(nobody cared to
tell the difference)
lived amongst
vegetable bouillion
blue onion, baby
corn in the pantry.
We liked to pretend
he wasn’t there.
When we finally
accepted that
mousey had been
mingling with the
chopped baby
carrots, we laid
out some sort of
pesticide, I’m not
sure why we didn’t
just set a trap.
Does rat poison work
on mice? Did we already
decide, if we should call
it a mouse or a rat?
Mouse is less
menacing.
And suddenly there
was infestation that
would have made
the books, the
ones about
‘The Creepy
Crawlies’
we made history,
our house crawled
with bug-out-eye-
widening life. The
shingled roof was
spidering out of
control, inching with
worms and aphids and
avidly we sat in our car
when we arrived home,
eyes sitting outside of
what our livelihood
had now become.
The children’s
digestible vegetables
had no new gnaws
and mouse-y lay
a limp lump.
When we realized the
pesticide finally
did mousey in
we pushed the rest
aside: the horsehair worms
sliming between
our toes in the bathtubs
and the tender itch in
our scalps resting
in splintered bedframes.
Bathworms will live
another day in vain,
lice residing in the
fine lines of blind heads,
Long Live the Pests!