Five Poems by Richard Weaver

 

Freddy Rat twerks

 

atop a titanium cheese vat. Pasteur his lactose intolerant god

on this earthly olfactory jukebox. The echo of his footprints

smooths over with fermentation. Outside the factory, rain rinses itself

off fenders of fake metal, plastic chrome bumpers, and seeks instead

the metal underbellies, knowing no good undercoating goes

unscathed by its compatriots, sun and salt. Even as the arrow

has fled the bow, and buries itself in the center of a heart

without rhythm or melody, a wooden love in a world without

wings, Freddy Rat, meantime, dances a moonwalk at full noon,

when the light is best and his audience above most appreciative.

His paws pause to admire the warmth from above as it meets

and matches the silvery warm below. They are one in this process.

Both powered by progress. The life force face to face with insatiable

inertia. The dance of death embracing the fandango of life. Freddy Rat.

 

Blind Owl

 

never blinks. Having seen this before

it remains unamused. Who’d have thought

a rabbit would be so sacrificially dumb, dumb

enough to hop into its open mouth? Who’d imagine

a savoury field mouse would follow? Or a baby shrew?

A peppermint flavoured vole? Blind Owl is relieved

that skunks keep their distance. He avoids them

as well. His preferences: rat or squirrel,

given the chance. Lizard with piri piri sauce.

Frogs are not fancied. Nor lower life forms:

worms, snakes, spiders, wasps, moths. Songbirds

are a default delicacy. It’s the challenge that matters

most. Appetizers are never refused. Other owls

may eat silence, their preferred sauce, especially

at dawn. But Blind Owl shares no recipes, and never

meets to compare raptor techniques for hunting

or gathering. Roosting for him, is a solitary sport.

Best not bother him when he’s horny or hungry.

 

Rat Trap Revolution

 

There are those who listen with their eyes and paws,

whose ears detect meaning without errors of observations.

They’re the chosen few, the ones who have adapted

and found fertile ways to evolve, survive and thrive.

They are not so easily caught and do contend their loss

in the future. They are aligned, able to loop, have Bluetooth

and embedded Wi-Fi chips installed. Defiant destroyers

of all things man-made, they walk freely in the open, untethered,

not bothering to hide behind designer shades, or form-fitting

Under Armor® sportswear. Black Box traps, death camps

for most rats, are de-cheesed and recycled when possible.

Security cameras are gnawed offline, or coated with dog shit,

an always ready revolution material. The chosen few remain

unknown, unseen, undeterred, and invisibly confidant, doing

what they must for their own kind, the rats trapped in short lives

with long tails and a constant, dangerous preying hunger.

 

Your crooked little heart

 

creaks open, a soprano with a dayglow green

sinus infection. There is a suspicious sound

cascading from the aortic valve. A stentorian

stenosis with the oddest echo of reluctance.

An insistence, a resistance to being pressured

to perform, an unwillingness to continue.

You are willing, however, to share your pain

on the half-shell with wasabi. The aura of your

anxious audacity. And we, the audience applaud

like seals on crack-laced sardines. Amnesiacs

on holiday strolling through black markets

on an always stunning sunny day. We are easily

entertained, and destined to be repeat offenders

who always tip as if they were betting on

every grey horse to win going away.

 

Hardscrabble

 

A deer licks a salt block kissed

with the essence of a Sonoran Desert toad:

a psychedelic death expanding

into a Lou Reed Berlin rat frenzy.

 

A giraffe emits its first sound ever,

a guttural grunt escalating up its neck,

vertebrae by vertebrae. Alas, it falls on

earless squids, although naked mole rat

offers deeper interpolation.

 

A horse may neigh. Or whinny. It might

snort or sigh. It could groan, roar or scream.

Its squeal cannot be confused with its nicker.

But its silence should always be rat-feared.

 

A cow will flatulate at will in your non-specific

direction. It lows in response to a bull’s bellow.

Its moo may mean mating. Or fear. Pain

or its opposite, pleasure. Moo and low

are clearly interchangeable. No rat mediation needed.

 

For a rat it’s less about clicks or chirps,

squeals or hisses. Or grindings. It’s all

about the volume. The louder the more

distressed. Except for pleasure. Tickle them

and an ultrasonic laughter overflows the walls.

Richard Weaver - Post-Covid, the author has returned as the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub in Baltimore. Among his other pubs: conjunctions, Vanderbilt Review, Southern Quarterly, Free State Review, Hollins Critic, Misfit Magazine, Loch Raven Review, The Avenue, New Orleans Review, & Burningword. He’s the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press, 1992), and wrote the libretto for the symphony, Of Sea and Stars (2005). He was a finalist in the 2019 Dogwood Literary Prize in Poetry. His 200th Prose poem was recently published.