"An Old Story," Mark Kraushaar

[switchercat.livejournal.com]

From Kraushaar's book Falling Brick Kills Local Man, 2009, University of Wisconsin Press.

Once there was a weary farmer
and his nervous wife.
Picture their leaking roof and downer cows,
and consider their flooded fields and ruined corn.
There'd been his cheating
and her temper and even the boy
(not his) just six, and how
she wouldn't control him.
Now one night she was basting a goose
when three mice crossed the kitchen
and climbed over the stove.
It was odd—as far as blind mice go,
as far as any mice, you never saw such a sight
in your life, not the red-tipped canes,
not the little tin cups.
Not only that.

She said these mice love jazz music.
She said they meet every midnight under the sink.
She said the one on sax taps his pointy-toed shoes, the one
on keyboards wears wraparound shades,
and, in fancy pegged pants, the hip,
fat mouse hunkers over the drums.
And so in the farthest corner of the night,
when the moon inventories the trees and the streets
lie perfectly still, strange harmonies prevailed,
and she'd sneak through the kitchen
with her long, shiny knife.
What's true? What's ever true.
Maybe they chased her,
but the more she saw the less she'd say.
Still, she was known all over for these marvelous
breads, pies with exotic ingredients, stews with the chewy,
delectable morsels the whole town devoured
with a little pepper and a pinch of salt.