POEM
The Paris Mouse
hunched over the greasy
burner on the stove
was noir, as in
film noir, as in
cauchemar,
as in le nuit
not blanche but
noir, the dream you can’t
wake up from, meaning she
was a mouse fatale,
licking the old oil
glued to the old
cooktop, feasting
in her tiny hunched-up
sewer life
on fats & proteins for her
bébés all atremble in their
rotting poubel nest,
so when I screamed my piercing
Anglo-Imperial scream of
horror & betrayal—
not my stove, not my traces of
pot au feu—
she leaped, balletic, over
the sink, the fridge, the lave-vaiselle,
& back to the cave & the trash she
scuttled, grim as a witch
in La Fontaine
who has to learn
the lesson we
all must learn:
Reality is always sterner
than pleasures of the nighttime burner.
"The Paris Mouse" by Sandra Gilbert from Poetry Magazine 5/06.
Source: Poetry (July 2006).
This poem originally appeared in the July 2006 issue of Poetry.
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