Rodential Waltzes in the Green Sepulchrous Kitchen

The ______ in its woody twin radar
cap applies non-transitive logic to
nocturnal fluorescence. Across the
proto-landfill of your unwashed
crockery. Perpetually both sixteen
and forty-five years old, the ______
plasters its walls with automobile
posters and chews through the Globe
and Mail with a dyspeptic
insouciance genetically encoded as
pornography. The whine of its
gyroscopic transmission contributes
as much to the microcosm of urban
blight as do the precautionary
accommodations we secrete around
it.

Here’s a game we can discuss
a game that we can:

furry animal with furry tail leaping across the candlestick breadcrust

Yes, a mouse.
In the kitchen.
Clattering along the linoleum and
Tunnels in the wains cot
Wain scot.

Scoot. A trap loaded with peanut butter.
(The brand name of this trap
Victory. Which is significant.
Victory in the campaign to
control the kitchen. In the campaign
not to share the kitchen.)

Observation: “The mouse ate the peanut butter right out of the trap.”
Response: “This time.”

Diving from behind the telephone wheels spinning by my footsteps.

The mouse chewed: a T4 form
a branflake box
a vitamin bottle
a tupperware sugarsaver

The kitchen kill ratio close to that of
the U.S. & co./Iraq war/massacre.
The mouse opposes a formidable
battery of hi-tech paraphernalia:
ultrasonic repellents, cage and crush
traps, food borne poisons, with a
single weapon: surprise. Leaping out
from butter dishes and sealed
drawers, the mouse must sufficiently
startle her adversary that seizure and
cardiac arrest ensue. While this is
fairly easy to accomplish, it induces
fatality only in rare and isolated
instances.

Insert Nursery Rhyme reference if desired.

The mouse chewed: a refrigerator compressor
a microwave turntable
food processor blades
the strings of my heart
(which went Zing!)

Rustlerustlerustle. Trottrot.

No floursack is safe. Spoor
radar the human mouser. Combing
combing the wheatgerm. These are
very large mousekins with indefatigable
rodentteeth. Chewing the human imposed
edifice artifice. Negotiate
human.
While there’s still time.

-Ken Howe