"My Neighbor Uses Poison"by Catherine Rockwood

My neighbor uses poison

to kill rats. Sometimes foxes

indirectly.  He makes a point

of saying he remembers me.

Maybe not point. Maybe he can’t

help it. Some recognitions need 

to be uttered. Or be recognized

as need. He makes me nervous.

I have built something, in my body,

but there’s no part of the body

that won’t spill. Even your bones

will do it. He uses anticoagulants.   

Catherine Rockwood lives near Boston. She reads and edits for Reckoning Magazine. Two chapbooks of poetry, Endeavors to Obtain Perpetual Motion and And We Are Far from Shore: Poems for Our Flag Means Death, are available from the Ethel Zine Press. Catherine's most recent chapbook, Dogwitch, is available from Bottlecap Press.