Posted
by Billy Keefe
July 4, 2007 at 6:54 p.m.
The Death of a Beloved Rat
There are many things we feel though we never wanted to, rat love among them.And here it is in the bottom of the cage, bloated and stiff, the small creature who kept her sorry secrets when no one else would. This friend she bought for five dollars at a store when no one would help her or care to listen including her cruel lover who convinced her to give head to ex-boyfriends for rent money and made her sleep in the hallway or the closet after they fought. Here lies the pet who always had a bed and food. Here lies the pet that was a desperate concession to the urge to procreate against the laws of slum lords. No overnight guests, no children, no cats, no dogs. Only rat, with kisses from small tongue and claws grabbing flesh. Only this morning the angry, underfed, self-absorbed human child inside me was wishing ill will indiscriminately and not only on herself. Then there was rat, unmoving and swollen. And my child went head-heavy reeling into irreversibly hopeless melancholy. Here lies the only thing that loved as indiscriminately as it ate.When you see something you think you cannot love, remember beloved rat.
and 3 others
Comments
Lawrence.com does not necessarily agree with comments posted below - responsibility lies with the relevant user alone. Read our full policy.
mitzibel (Misty Nuckolls) says…
My ex-husband once wrote about a suicide attempt thwarted by one of (formerly) our cats who quite adamantly reminded him that he was the only one on earth who would feed her.
We take what we can get, and are grateful for it if we've half a brain in our heads.
And we grieve like fuck when we lose it.
billy (Billy Keefe) says…
I have had similar feelings about my dogs. I told the activist once that my older dog had unintentionally saved my life and that I owe her one (or three).
betwixt (anonymous) says…
Just wanted to say how much I appreciate what you did for Bingham.
There are many ways in which each of us saves the others life, in little chunks, a bit at a time.
mitzibel (Misty Nuckolls) says…
While we're on morbid pet disposal (I like the funeral pyre, though), when I was a kid I insisted on burying every single pet, from dog to goldfish. One day while digging for antique marbles (an extraordinary amount of them turned up in our dirt, many of them stone Native American ones, and I absolutely got off on the idea of holding in my hand something some kid a hundred years or more had played with.), I inadvertently wandered into the pet cemetary. I think I still have that perfect goldfish skeleton in its Flintstones-printed sandwich baggie stashed in a cigar box in my parents' attic . . .unless my dad found it without his glasses and mistook it for weed he'd hidden ;)
gutternoise (Josh Robbins) says…
Burning the Cat
In the spring, by the big shuck-pile
Between the bramble-choked brook where the copperheads
Curled in the first sun, and the mud road,
All at once it could be no longer ignored.
The season steamed with an odor for which
There has never been a name, but it shouted above all.
When I went near, the wood-lice were in its eyes
And a nest of beetles in the white fur of its armpit.
I built a fire there by the shuck-pile
But it did no more then pop the beetles
And singe the damp fur, raising a stench
Of burning hair that bit through the sweet day-smell.
Then thinking how time leches after indecency,
Since both grief is indecent and the lack of it,
I went away and fetched a newspaper,
And wrapped it in dead events, days and days,
Soaked it in kerosene and put it in
With the garbage on a heaped nest of sticks:
It was harder to burn than the peels of oranges,
Bubbling and spitting, and the reek was like
Rank cooking that drifted with the smoke out
Through the budding woods and clouded the shining dogwood.
But I became stubborn: I would consume it
Though the pyre should take me a day to build
And the flames rise over the house. And hours I fed
That burning, till I was black and streaked with sweat;
And poked it out then, with charred meat still clustering
Thick around the bones. And buried it so
As I should have done in the first place, for
The earth is slow, but deep, and good for hiding;
I would have used it if I had understood
How nine lives can vanish in the flash of a dog's jaws,
A car, or a copperhead, and yet one small
Death, however reckoned, is hard to dispose of.
W.S. Merwin
from The First Four Books of Poems
godjilla (Jill Ensley) says…
Misty, I used to bury everything too. Sometimes I'd go looking for roadkill to bury. I liked the ceremony of it, perhaps a touch of morbid OCD? I made crosses, headstones, said made-up prayers. I stashed the bodies of broken animals all over the outskirts of our house. The lower half for larger animals. Skylar, the blue jay, buried in reverence on the South side for some reason. On the North side is what could only be called "The Ant Farm". Yes, I had ant funerals. Who knows. I'd might have been an undertaker if not for the fluids, instead I turned into a goth kid.
C'est la vie.
Ou, la mort.
billy (Billy Keefe) says…
I frequently scare myself as well (wink).
billy (Billy Keefe) says…
MITZ: Still loving the image of the goldfish in the flintstones bag.
rednekbuddha (Kelly Powell) says…
LeAnn and mines dog, ginger, has an unatural lust for fireworks.....which pretty much dictates a huge viking style funeral with pyrotechnics......If she has to be put down, I am seriously considering just lighting a half stick of dynamite and letting her go for it.
thetomdotdot (anonymous) says…
You could design a new line of polytechnics in her honor.
Ginger mist.
Thats beautiful, man.
thetomdotdot (anonymous) says…
pyrotechnics