Wet

"What’s more wet looking when it’s wet than a rat?"
-Lorine Niedecker in a letter to Louis Zukofsky

A cat, Lorine,
after its bath
and loose up a tree,
hissing its wrath.

Or a bat
hanging wet
in a jet-
black cave.

A felt hat
floating
in a pond,
not to mention
what’s gone
to the bottom
and beyond.

Or yesterday’s paper
in a rain-filled gutter,
reduced to a pulp
for the sewer to gulp.
And one more, please,
just for the hell of it:
a piss-drunk poet
diving for halibut.

 

  — Roger Pfingston