Rats Eating Each Other's Poop

Abstract

Rats Eating Each Other's Poop Lucas Jorgensen (bio) It's what our father called us when you chasedme down the hallway with a spade, when I practicedmy pro-wrestling, my flash of sweet chin musicon your face. If we were rats eating each others' proverbial poop, I apologize for snappingup enough to fill me & an entire wharffor several fat lifetimes. I apologize for the bagof mashed potato I bellyflopped across the wallpaper in the foyer & for our father's beltthat sang over your ass alone when I flushedthe blame your way. I was a bully. I fleecedmy fear out of you. The big brother: the father paraphrased. Feces was a feast I could notflick my whiskers from, the dessert we sharedfrom our father's buffet—that great field-leveler,ass-grasser, flinger-of-first-dung. I hope there is a place for forgiveness, wastedtoo many months too pissed at you to pick upmy phone, don't want to forget our cherry popsicles& bullfrog hunts, the fake cheese stains on our fingers, public pool days. Any rats canmake a rat king with enough fur & pitch to stringtheir tails together. I wish I had figured soonerI'd be too full of my shit to want your plate. [End Page 318] Lucas Jorgensen Lucas Jorgensen is a poet and educator from Cleveland, Ohio. He holds an MFA from New York University where he was a Goldwater Fellow. Currently, he is a PhD candidate at the University of North Texas and reads poetry for The Iowa Review and American Literary Review. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Massachusetts Review, Poet Lore, Fugue, and others. Copyright © 2022-2023 Pleiades and Pleiades Press