Slugs, in salt or squished between toes.
Flies, crushed with a pink swatter.
Mosquitos, on sunburnt skin, spilling their red cargo.
Neon tetras, jewels bleached pale in the aquarium.
Rainbow trout, bludgeoned in the bottom of a wooden boat.
A rabbit, wild, brown, under the wheel of my car.
Chickens on the chopping block, legs clasped hard, wings pumping.
The old goat, Mrs. DiCatto, a bullet to her head.
Her shock - how she trusted me.
Author notes
p. 42
In a list
Comments
1 - 34 of 34
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I have a costa rican shrunken head made from domestic cat skin. i swear the cat knows that. everytime it sneaks into my pop's office, it goes straight to it to investigate it. I can't have it anywhere else in the house or else it will probably chew on it. and even though it's not the real thing, it's quite expensive. funny poem
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Wow, this is fantastic. The title immediately drew me in. The way this gradually goes from a small animal to a big one is effective, and the theme is something not everypoet writes about. It's not pretty, but it happens, and you have written it well, not adding unnecessary details. And the ending line... that gives the poem its strength, I think. I have seen good twists, but rarely ones that really make me gasp like that. Honestly, it is very touching and thought provoking. And, I think we do that so often, literally and figuratively, that such a reminder and a signal of awareness is always welcome. I can't begin to tell you how much I have liked this and how it's impressed me.
~Diana
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Thank you for your kind remarks, Diana.
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I love that you give the goat a human name, possibly suggesting the murder of an elderly woman. Very "crime and punishment".
I maimed a duck accidentally when I was very young, breaking his wing with a thrown rock. I never, ever thought I would hit the duck, having been throwing rocks at him and his flock for hours. I have never been the same.
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I thought that was a pigeon, the explosion of feathers - I remember the poem, you almost-AP-Idol you.
Mrs DiCatto was named by a previous "owner" - I can take no credit for that; any "crime and punishment" moment is just a happy accident. I could get all pridely puffed up about your compliment, but the honest response is "I wish I'd thought of that."
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Maybe you're thinking of Jeff's plume. It was really good and about smoking a pigeon, kid with a rifle I think, and the last line was
I'm trying to fly (or words to that effect) -
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I think you're right - bastard beat us out with that one, didn't he?
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Oh no. I killed that pigeon with the grill of my Blazer. Different bird. Yikes, I have killed more than i thought. I don't keep track, yo.
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This is quite chilling. . .especially the slug bit, but that is simply b/c i love slug s and snails. i think that is the only line that i didn't think had the same impact as the rest b/c it didn't have quite the same believable type of description. Perhaps this isn't constructive, but it's all i've got.
Lizbian
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LIZBIAN!!
How great to see you after all this time; thanks for stopping by. Hey, you're absolutely right, that line lacks image, and I wouldn't have even noticed had you not pointed it out. So there ya go, VERY useful. Thank you!
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Interesting...no? How we can separate those killings easily (to a point)...when necessity or annoyance is involved....and yet, feel it with something named (or completely unnecessary)?
We have, as a society, come so far from basic survival needs that we can look upon killings as unnecessary (witness the fur protesters) -- yet..that same killing is behind every Big Mac and it is not...as respectful a death.
Yes..the two final lines do make this work very well.
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No, not an equation, a molecule. That's what I meant.
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Oh I saw Fast Food Nation recently, and...well.
I have little patience with people who only jump to the defence of cute furry things.
At the same time, I like to think that if we must kill, let's use the whole animal. I have drums with goatskin heads and shakers made of goat hooves. I like the African believe that the spirit of the animal (and of the tree) is in the instrument. One honours the sacrifice made.
Thank you Bohbiwan. I see you've become an equation.
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Shakers made of goat hooves? Umm...musical I assume and not salt
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Catalogue
Whitman was a magificent catloguer -- and even that old curmudgeon Ezra made some peace with him.
I obsees about the killing done by mere existence
Wally Shawn -- funny little actor and superb playwright
wrote a shoprt one act/one man play entitled "The Fever"
In it the character frets about all of the unnamed thousand he likks by existence
sweatshop workers ,those who go without eating so he can feast at parties
Things and the acquisiton thereof create a greedy gluttony of consumption
and with only so much pie to go around
the gourmand starves children in Dafur
So anyway
you should kill more things
Clint Eastwood's dark poetical film "White Hunter Black Heart" is full of the symbols of killing
the Huston character after shooting an elephant that then tramples an African husbdan and father to death
says:
"There are times when you can't wonder whether it's the rightor wrong thing to do."
"Sometimes you have to do something just because it is the wrong thing to do"
Or words like that
I am getting old and memory of movies is not what it was.
Peace.
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Thank you for this great comment. I need to start keeping a list of all the movies, plays, etc, that you refer to, and hope that one day I'll have (or make) the time to see them.
I think we are getting close to the time when the walls between rich and poor will crumble, blasted down, actually, by hoards of the hungry. What we have in this world is an imbalance that just can't hold. We are the bourgeoisie, and the proletariat is coming, from India, from Africa, from China.
That's if global warming doesn't get us first.
Thanks, again, Peacenik comrade.
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thank you
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Yup, been through this lot. The joys of growing up rural.
You have describe each in its own bit of flavour, shows respect even in death.
John -
excellent.. just.. excellent..
you could probably get by without 'their' in spilling their red cargo..
and the 'the' in "pale in the aquarium" by making aquariums plural but I don't know if that would change things too much.. and really it's just my nit-picky mind being too picky these days.
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I had a dream about neon tetras last night (aswell as the one where I became an auxilliary fireman and had to sleep in a very bare room on a hard bed with a rough blanket, waiting for the siren to go.) I killed a sea horse once- used to keep a lot of tropical fish, and we got a salt water aquarium and the water wasn't right for this little sea horse and it went all pale , then transparent, then it lay on the white sharp sand with its skeleton all like coral bones.
During the last couple of years I have become extremely sensitive to killing things I would never have thought twice about before. I think it started with what happened to the Herdwick lamb. Or maybe in 2001 when I took Isla our dog to the vet for the sleepy needle, and how she trusted me that we were coming back.
Of course, your poem made me squirm- All those invertebrates, well they don't matter, and the rabbit- well teh rabbit is furry and cuddly but onle a wild rabbit- we shoot them as vermin here, and they are all over the lanes as road kill every morning. But Mrs DiCatto? A Goat? A story book goat? A bullet cold and calm? (I presume it was a goat and not your neighbour.)
This is a 'clever'little poem, starts yep okay no one likes these slimy things, and yeah, everyone swats flies, then it gets rhythmmic and shiny and the things not so nasty- the language poem language which validates the prettiness of the tetra and emphasises the violence of the bludgeoning of the trout, the movement in the necking of the chickens. then this culminates in the matter of fact language of the bullet.
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I've been holding on to this one for quite a while because I thought I might get some flack from urbanites who would rather think their meat was never anywhere but in white styrofoam and shrinkwrap. It feels something like confession, to me. Anyhow, response has been kind...and thank you for yours.
Mrs DiCatto had had mastitis, you see, and was sterile, so she had to go, poor thing. But people who think such killing is done in cold blood are mistaken. I've never met a farmer who didn't love his/her animals.
I think I am more sensitive now than I used to be, too. I make a big to-do about saving the spiders in the tub before I turn on the shower.
Thank you for your stories and your own confessions; I love hearing from you.
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You know, we need a little of this now and then. That last line made a good poem great.
I almost got depressed, but you switched my train of thought.
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I used to cut heads of chickens on my Mum's best friends farm when i was a little skinny girl full of josh!! ...... the thought of it now makes me re-coil with uncomfortable feelings - of how could i?? and of course as a kid we have no fear....
I love Desis' view on Mrs DiCatto- she must have been a silly old bat indeed
bloody marvelous plumery... ... I know Lisa has suggested jiggling the end.... maybe i would or wouldn't depending if there was a Y in the day...
although I would prefer to lose the A at the beginning of the rabbit line.. and maybe have wild brown rabbit under the wheel??
who knows.... as you know i am very daft
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Dear Nurse Daft,
I always thought if you had the nerve to eat something, you ought to have the nerve to face the truth about it. I dunno. I was a vegetarian back then, lol. Sometimes on the way to work I see chicken trucks on their way to the plant; our farm chickens had a GREAT life. Bravo to little girls who aren't afraid.
Thanks for coming by, as you always do. I owe you about 583 comments, I'm sure.
Love, Z
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i like this ... there is some puncuation i would lose, and i'm not a fan of the format, but hell ... the content and cleverness of this just makes me smile
nice work
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Tis rather comma-ridden. What seems right one day looks all wrong the next. Harumph. Thank you for your input - I appreciate it.
God, I haven't seen you around in a hell of a long time, but maybe I wasn't looking in the right direction. Nice to see you!
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I hit a deer once by accident. Did 1000$ damage to my car. I would never kill anyone or anything when there are those out there who will do it for me for a few bucks
The end made me chuckle. Foolish woman that Mrs. DiCatto.
Desiree -
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Yeah I remember the weekend of the deer. Bummer.
Oh. You just made me read my poem in a whole new way. Thankie!
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Ironic - I just wrote a poem regarding the importance of lists. Perhaps in the back of my head this title was swimming around, as well as a few others, that inspired me for my piece. - regardless, I loved the humor of this piece. I'm finding that if you continue listing the pages that are inspiring you and coming up with such poems - you're going to market that book of yours as well as your own strength in writing.
Glad I came by and got a smile before I close "shop" for the night in this place.
- Kim
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Bravo!
My list of such things would end in the same animal... only it was a pygmy and his name was Baby Boy. Poor thing. How I loved that baby goat.
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You too? Goats are easy to love, yes. Thanks for commenting, Analise.
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Lots of the poems I write in my head that I never actually write down are list poems. Once I posted one at the mean people poem place (though I didn't really think it was a list poem they said it was) but they also said it was awful but that lists "could be written" if done the right way. What the fuck that means who knows. Maybe this is what they meant.
Brave and very good. However, lol as in your previous post, I think you have not left us on the right line.
The old goat, Mrs. DiCatto, a bullet to her head.
Her shock - how she trusted me.
How she trusted me, the old goat, Mrs. DiCatto,
Her shock, a bullet to her head.
Or something like that.
I like brave poems.
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Ok, this I'll have to think about; the last one, there was no doubt - you were right. Thanks for the different angle, anyhow.
A list poem is a kind of poem; what kind of self-proclaimed expert would say one "could" be written? I'm so glad you're not listening to those eejits anymore.
I began a poem tonight that started "I am in this poem", because I have a growing aversion to prejudices about what makes poetry. Every "rule" excises one more possibility. Why would we want to do that?
You wrote a great list poem for a contest here, I remember - but the contest host didn't get it. Maybe they were a visitor from the mean place, I dunno.
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