The Common Norway Rat
Those bastards. Your closest neighbors. Those sleek, fat embarrassments. Jolly Hoss and Monstrous Millie dance and squeal the night long. Rats. Everywhere. We all live in rat’s alley, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, and if the dead men lost their bones? They would be gnawed clean by daybreak. Recycling carts racket, one by one, like giant blue jumping beans. Greasetrap dumpsters splish-splash as moonlight diving pools. Call them by their name! HEY RAT. Rat will stop and stare, solid on the ground, ready to leap into the air, ready to shimmy that long body into your pantry and between your joists and burrow into your dreams. Those fat hungry bastards. Taking over the neighborhood. Or maybe that’s how they see us. And know that’s how they’ll remember us when we’re gone. (Ray Pride)
Best of Chicago 2018
