when she said the mice
would burrow back
into the deep bin.
Reaching my hand
into the barrel’s hovel,
their nest skittered—
cottoned in salvage. We
tipped the tiny family
into damp oak leaves on
the lawn & rid the bin
of seed. I’d filled
our feeders beckoning
goldfinches, black-capped
chickadees, suet for
sapsuckers. My wife
worried they’d return—
I dismissed her fears.
Days later, black dust
littering the cover,
evidence of reentry.
Three starved bodies
huddled in the bottom,
one faceless—
consumed by her own kin.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 23, Issue 6.
Rage Hezekiah is a Cave Canem, Ragdale, and MacDowell Fellow who earned her MFA from Emerson College. She is a recipient of the Saint Botolph Emerging Artist Award and she serves as Editorial Liaison at The Common. Her forthcoming collection, Yearn, is a 2021 Diode Editions Book Contest winner. She is the author of Unslakable (Paper Nautilus Press, 2019) and Stray Harbor (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Rage’s poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, The Cincinnati Review, The Colorado Review, and many other journals and anthologies. You can find more of her work at ragehezekiah.com.
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