“All That Died in the Cat-Punctured Mouse”

Click here to listen to Dean Young read this poem. was needless to the eternal mouse who gigantically stands over me as I drop his used-tea-bag body into the trash, even the trash standing over itself with stink by the end of the week suggesting a thing of beauty may linger not eternally in the mind but it’s not beauty’s fault, it is the mind’s. The mind is made of milk and refrigeration has its limits. So while in Italy, see as many Caravaggios as you can and I will look here in my bushes and grocery store. I will go through my closet. It is shadow that brings forth grace he would have agreed with Leonardo, some things are truest only glimpsed although reflectology can reveal how a ruffian becomes a cherub, the eyes that were once open half-closed, a hand now lifted to a cheek. Still as sugar is the house, distant stays the sea, the eternal part of my friend must be needed elsewhere which may account for my continued grief. Come back it’s silly to plead yet the moon comes back and it is everything to me, the springtime crickets, the cheese steaks of Philadelphia, my brain inside a bell until static overwhelms the broadcast like a fire alarm a history class and no one runs or screams, having been so well drilled.