One floor up you remember
it was a rat who said

"nothing is easier
for the mind to know

than itself." Odds
of the squirrel offing

the drunk and still
out the sill

you have not wrestled
until you've wrestled the rat.

People keep their mouths and
windows shut. Like records

when they were records
and letters letters.

Correctional tape and
typewriters will never write

this story. A lust
for the old lurid

images, gravitational pull
now, not even asked.

The mechanics of inner space,
the lapse and the rat

and the rat and the flowerpot;
a great and squandered vanity.

Issue #2