The God of Rats

Tree rats crouch under the hood of my car.

In the heat and oily smell the engine gives up after dark

they spit out the husks of palm nuts scavenged

from the yard next door.    After that they will sharpen

their incisors on my compressor hose and take a nap.

I am thinking up ways to kill them.

I handle the traps with tongs and outsized gloves

employing the vocabulary of destruction

like a god who must distance himself to work—

I will save my car. 

To the north, fire clouds spark on their columns of smoke. 

Rain evaporates before it hits the ground.    Rats

worship their own god. He gives them soft skulls

that flatten through cracks, the cunning to  hunker down

in enemy exhaust. To the north,

the pall of smoke is so dense, it’s midnight at 4 p.m.

About the Author

Alison Turner’s debut collection, The Second Split Between, was selected by Dorianne Laux to be the winner of the 2021 Catamaran Poetry Prize for West Coast Poets. Her poems have appeared in various journals including The American Poetry Journal, Mid-American Review, San Pedro River Review, Hudson Review, and Poetry East. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, writer Lou Mathews.