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Four Poems by John Deming
Rhapsody in Rat
Rats know when you’re watching them.
Yeah, so I’m smoking on the fire escape
overlooking the alley, and rats
fleck in and out, as they do,
and I look with pure fury
at a rat maybe fifty yards off,
its furry back, thick tail
and burning oven of pursuit,
and it is not even facing me
but freezes then sprints
through a brick wall. The rat
ran through a brick wall.
Rats can feel you looking at them. -
Catch by Allison Cobb
What moment was
the moment
my mom died.
We weren’t sure
my dad and I—
we hold that
hard gift close
between—the
us that makes
us selves who
stood beside
her birdlike
curled in—
Oh. It is
a moment—breath
and then
it stops—that’s
real, declare
the time—we had
a clock there, red
with numbers—
Mom.
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I Promise Not to Behave by Sharon Mesmer
— after and for Lydia Tomkiw (US, 1959 — 2007)
You slip your purple glitter turban on,
Spread my tarot cards on the table and whisper:
“I see a fever has crawled into you.”
I roll my eyes:
“Scarlet? Or yellow?”
You squint through the velvety knots of your lashes:
“Too early to tell.”
“What kind of an answer is that?” I demand.
“I don’t know,” you sneer,
“How many kinds are there?”We’re in your parents’ kitchen on Oakley.
