Animal Prudence by Kathy Fagan

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend June 23, 2016   Animal Prudence   Kathy Fagan

Mice drink the rainwater before dying by the poison we set in the cupboard for them. They come for the birdseed, and winter is so grey here the sight of a single cardinal can keep us warm for days. We’ll justify anything—and by we, I mean I, and by I, I mean we, with our man-is-the-only- animal-who and our manifest destiny, killers each of us by greater or lesser degrees. Instead of a gun or knife in my pocket there are two notes. Unwhich the// dandelion, reads one. I don’t know what it means but cannot throw it away; it is soft as cashmere. The other says: coffee, chocolate, birdseed. I should be extinct by now, except I can’t make it on to that list either. Like toothpicks made of plain wood, some things are increasingly hard to find. Even when he was a young drunk going deaf from target practice, my father preferred picking his teeth to brushing them. My mother preferred crying. They bought or rented places on streets named Castle, Ring, Greystone— as if we were heroes in a Celtic epic. Our romanticism was earned, and leaned toward the gothic, but lichen aimed for names on gravestones far lovelier than our own. It seemed to last a long time, that long time ago, finches pixelating the hurricane fences, cars idling exhaust, dandelions bolting from flower to weed to delicacy, like me. Egyptians prepared their dead for a difficult journey; living is more —I was going to say, more difficult, but more alone will do, imprudent— unlike art—always falling below or rising above the Aristotelian mean. In France, a common rural road sign reads: Animal Prudence. Purely cautionary, it has nothing to do with Aristotle, but offers sound advice nonetheless. These days, I caution my father more than he ever cautioned me. He hears his aural hallucinations better and shows greater interest: sportscasters at ballgames, revelers at the parties he insists on. He’s got all his own teeth, so toothpicks must do the job. His pockets fill with them. There are always half a dozen rattling like desert bones in my dryer. I think of the mason who chiseled his face in the cathedral wall; he couldn’t write his name. The yellow bouquets I’d offer my mother by the fistful also got their name in France: dent de lion, meaning teeth of the lion.            Copyright © 2016 Kathy Fagan. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “‘Animal Prudence’ began with two notes I found in my pocket: one that I could explain and another that I could not. I’ve been working this year on poems engaged with multiple levels of perception and predation. Perception itself is a predatory act, and to make poetry, I feel, attempts to keep fresh the wounds of the prey.” —Kathy Fagan   Kathy Fagan is the author of Sycamore (Milkweed Editions, 2017). She teaches at The Ohio State University and lives in Columbus, Ohio.     Poetry by Fagan   The Charm (Lynx House Press, 2012)  "Ghost Eden" by Erika Meitner "Eminent Victorians" by Rebecca Wolff "Vespers" by Louise Glück Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038