Animal Cabinet

by Macaulay Glynn





In spite of the citywide curfew your dog

takes off running through

rain. You can't tell the 

worms from the asphalt, the wet 

light of a streetlamp over living things or

lawn clippings, or the nearby whistle-

moan of a mourning train from the Morse-

percussed manifesto of the mouse 

in the walls, here, where your dog 

now dries herself on your bedspread,

the place where you can still hear at least

one mouse, whose kind

you evicted in droves last spring behind

the stove (and this was before you found

the plaster behind a cabinet 

eaten away) whose kind you carried

with the plastic trap towel-

wrapped under your coat to keep

warm--each of them looked different,

and it was the young ones whose glinting eyes

you held in your mind as you marched

to the treeline behind the foodbank so many nights

last March, dark and almost-wooded enough 

to believe the last one must still be around here 

somewhere, the streets end 

you approached in solemn pajamas

glad, once, to be holding a living thing in 

spite of, no matter, no matter how many 

times you caught and released, and told yourself

it was different than killing.





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