Each mouse
is the first mouse,

the same failure
to live clean-

ly, the same
reminder

that you cannot
pass this world

without the taint
of another’s

filth, without
having to kill.

Each mouse,
the first.

It was a nice body, slender,
not as flexible as you might
have hoped, fun for a few hours,
but nothing you would want
to keep or hold onto. The bodies
of young men are like
furniture from Ikea,
clean lines, smooth surfaces,
but no real promise
of longevity or staying power
and mine was no different,
and I knew that, which was
why I wanted the bodies
of older men, their skin
mapping out the place
I would go, their touch
the promise of living
into that country of age that
seemed so far away that
I thought might never get there.
One man would tell me
nothing, except to confirm
that he was older than
my father, and this was
on the subway, the morning
after we had lain down
on his bed under a painting
of him that had been done
when he was still a model,
decades ago. He liked
my body because it reminded
him of the one he had lost.
And it comforted him,
because his had been
so much prettier.

And now the world cracks open, like an enormous egg,
but not really, ha ha, nothing really cracks the world open,
not even that meteor that killed the dinosaurs, the world
was fine, still there, even if not quite the world it had been
the day before. Like how Dresden was still there, but not
quite Dresden, or Hiroshima, how it was there, but not quite
Hiroshima. The statistical probability of being a dinosaur
at the moment that the meteor hit is impossible to calculate,
because you would have to know whether any given dinosaur
was as likely to be any other given dinosaur, or whether
any living thing is as likely to be any other living thing,
but no matter what, the chance was tiny. No matter how you do
the math, every single dinosaur was statistically safe from
meteors, but then again, here we are, you and me, as human
and furless as we might have hoped, tiny teeth, opposable
thumbs, and all the birds locked out of our safe, insured
houses.

Laura Riding
Laura Riding
Laura Riding
           (Jackson)

Laura Riding
Laura Riding
Laura Riding
           (Jackson)

Laura Riding
Laura Riding
Laura Riding
           (Jackson)

Oh, the hole in the “o” is a lamb, my lord,
oh, the hole in the “o” is a lamb.