The Maynard
Spring 2018

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Ratterrattan

Rat, erm, Rat in kaftan, earning its Rat tan,
starfish floating on its Ratty Rat back
inside a seacan sized Pabst Blue Ribbon,
bobbing and only sometimes bumping up along
a spent water bottle with its water bottle bottlecap
reattached, like water’d gone in for a
haircut, mess nest tucked up into a ball cap
and put ballcap back on right after that

Bacchus, dog of wine, roommate of longest
eyelashes, paints first morning light onto my
forehead with said eyelashes, and then, once my
nonbinarily ordinary eyelashes rise and my
eyelid garagedoors grow ^high, Bacchus of
longest eyelash vomits memoryfoam flotsam
bound in a beardnet into my welcoming
bellybutton, and then chases his tail like the
wind chases a whirligig

I choose to pursue you with duty equal to that of
my mother’s love for me
I am my mother in a later year than when I was her last
^Later+ 

And my son is my child first and foremost and
must be referred to as so _{(not so n)}
And my child loves that you skip along the
forest floor without knowing you skip at all
And my child hopes that wherever you may
meander that the skip tick Ratlantis picked you
to bestow upon will persist
My child is more worried about winter than they are about gender
And in this way, a traitor—
ampersandbox, the whole snowy winter beach
buries the sand just beneath said snow, so liltwilt scruff in its topsheet fwomp—
I think they, my child, just come to it
and it makes sense to explo(r/d)e it that way
and instead of overediting that moment away they let it stay and play
I am my child’s mother apologizing for my
child’s aforebathed-in flat-brim Irving ball cap
And I am my child’s mother inquiring: did you
see the video of that bipedal upright showering
Rat?