Challenger name: cat4452
Defender name: d e s d e m o n o
Bet: 1k
Judge: Sin Apophis
Preferred form: free verse
Subject: mousetraps
d e s d e m o n o
On Mousetraps
I remember the mornings, barefoot on the linoleum,
the world shrunk to a knot of pain here, just here,
above the left eye, a slight hollow where the sleep I still wanted
found its quiet revenge, and the curious odor of chlorine and glue
in my nostrils. For it was then that my father
taught me of the small and petty horrors
that lurk in the corner of every human's eye.
A shared unreasoned nightmare we sometimes are too quick
to forget, when we flee childhood. God knows I did,
and if he hadn't returned to me a healthy sense
of terror, gift-wrapped in logic, who knows where my mind
would have grown
curling like a fern over fancies and fences whose other faces
were best left unexplored? My father knew. And he loved me. So.
He would join me there, in those sullen, bloodless dawns, and
he would forbid me the prosaic orbits that built our days,
the not quite trustworthy water boiled in a slimed-over kettle,
bitter grounds that I used to sneeze over, just to make him laugh,
horrified, soggy cereal that went soggier while I daydreamed.
He forbade me those ritualized comforts for a moment,
and he bent down close to the sticky tiles,
feeling in the dust under the stove for the precisely calculated tool
of his teachings, a simple metal dish: no easy symbols here
no snap, no wire coils, just a dish
filled to the brim with glue. Poisonous, it must have been, because
its victim gnawed at the jelly and it died gnawing that stuff,
a soft little rodent throat as full of glue as the bowl, its long rodent teeth
sunk deep. And I knew
that the trap couldn't hurt me, couldn't touch me, now that I was
older than I had been and knew to go about shuttered,
holding words gingerly in my mouth and never tasting the air,
imagining myself safe enough to walk blind through other,
subtler dangers.
But the dead mice
oh
they frightened me, they horrified me. The trap:
that I could comprehend, that guarded me
but the mice, small velvety bodies splayed flat and shapeless,
the gray fur, matted with pearly beads of the ubiquitous glue,
the tiny claws not much like hands but hairless and
terribly familiar in their clutching. When his silent examination was done,
my father threw the corpses away
like a monster's dusty remains, when the sunlight is come,
and wiped his square hands on his jeans,
and I bit clean through my lip, watching. The traps,
they might have made me shudder, but I was willing to love them,
to cherish them, when the alternative was those damn dead mice. And after a while
I got used to the stink of chlorine and glue,
I got used to wearing my phobias, my night terrors, on my sleeve,
and after those mornings I remembered too to set mousetraps of my own,
as paltry, shining wards against the dark waiting in the corner of my eye.
The things I liked most about this poem was how skillfully you moved back and forth through time, and developed characters that I understood in about 35 lines. I had a keen feeling for who the father character was (protective, if not a bit controlling), and who the daughter/son character was (timid, impressionable, and keeping , by the end of the poem. I also adore the strong sensory images, the smell of the glue, and the fear of mice you so expertly describe. I almost got a headache after reading your first few lines. I could completely relate to that fear, the grip of anxiety, the way such small things can haunt you, and how we make big problems out of tiny things.
One problem I did have with this piece was the length, and some minor word repetition. It is quite bulky, but the strength of the poem really makes up for it. It’s beautifully written for such a dreary, dirty topic. This became much more than a mousetrap poem, or it is exactly what it is meant to be, full of keenly-calculated metaphors.
cat4452
I couldn't get my left toe in my shoe this morning...
The kitchen floor had become a mine shaft,
a ticking time-bomb avoided
in the tip-toe,
sneaking softly in the drip-drop
late night snack stop.
STOP
for the snapping clicky-clack
of mouse traps.
Little death catchers, neck breakers
let out their exasperation
on my toe.
Throbbing pain and yelled curse words pierce
the soft silent cover
of night.
I read this twice because I absolutely loved the way it sounded in my head! I imagined it as a little song, with a jazzy beat. I love the line “little death catchers, neck breakers” because it produces a great image. This was a strong poem and a perfect example that strong images and themes can be produced with very little words.
I didn’t really enjoy the first line as much as I did the rest of the poem. It seems to be the black sheep among lines that are much stronger than it. A small snag, however, because the rest of the poem had me so much more amused, and was so much stronger, that the first line is easily overlooked. And easily fixed.
The decision here is much harder than I imagined it being when I first read the topic of choice. Both of these poems are incredibly strong and I enjoyed them both very much. They are each unique, to the point, and beautiful in their own way. They are both, also, completely different in style. I really, really love both of them. Where one of them seemed to drag its feet, the other was strong. These poems are literal opposites of one another, but like yin and yang, mesh together surprisingly well.
After reading them both over several times, I declare
d e s d e m o n o the winner, on the grounds that she reached further through her poem to give the reader a real story, not just about catching mice, but about family, fear, and growing up. This was hard, because I enjoyed the quick-witted, fast paced feel/sound of cat’s poem just as much.
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