Albertson’s Barn, Lafayette Pastel, by John Cummings
The Little Mouse and Creation
The paradox of mutual anterior dependencies
In the beginning, the little mouse was in her burrow.
There could be no burrow, unless a mouse had dug it,
and no mouse without a burrow to be born in.
On the second day, a berry fell into the burrow.
The mouse ate the berry, it was delicious; she defecated the seed.
The seed sprouted and grew into a berry bush.
There could be no mouse unless a berry fed it,
no berry unless a mouse defecated its seed.
On the third day, a beetle ate the mouse’s excrement,
else the earth would fill up and be destroyed by waste.
Said the mouse, there could be no shiny beetle without my poop
and pooping would have to stop if there were no shiny beetle.
On the fourth day, a lizard with a long tongue ate the beetle.
On the fifth, the lizard was eaten by a flop-eared pig,
and on the sixth, a human, omnivorous as the pig,
barbequed it and smacked her lips and said I detect
a soupçon of lizard and beetle and droppings and fallen berry.
On the seventh day, the little mouse was happy
that such a beautiful world should begin with her burrow.
She groomed herself forepaw to snout, ear to hind paw, and napped.
There could be no world, she dreamed, unless there were Mouse,
no mouse unless there were Poet.
______________
J.S. Absher
Review by Cedar Koons
Other than the epigraph (if it is an epigraph), this poem reads like a children’s book—the kind of book adults love to read aloud to a sleepy child. I can see the illustrations, which include a butchering.
The poem’s repetitions–in the beginning, on the second day, and so forth to the seventh day–evoke the Biblical creation story. At first, the little mouse is the creator, and as a reader, I enjoyed her excellent work. She dug her burrow, feasted on a berry, defecated, and creation happened. Ultimately, she grooms herself and sleeps, resting like God on the Sabbath. In the mouse’s dream, however, we find Mouse sharing the godhead with Poet in head-to-tail contingency, giving readers a little surprise to contemplate.
Review by Massimo Fantuzzi
It is by coincidence (if you believe in such things) that we start this issue with a reminder of the seven days, the seven days it took God to create the universe, Earth smack in the middle, jewel of the crown, cherry on the cake, mankind in his image and in charge of the whole shebang.
And here we have it, depicted with tact, humor, and narrative skill, the too often overlooked, delicate and fortuitous, yet iron-clad chain that, binding all living things, their biology, their geology, their astronomy, their ecology, has brought us here, here to this specific point in the life and stretch corner of the cosmos. A story of interconnections and reciprocal needs that we’ve been able to trace back billions of years. Not a hierarchy, but a circle, one body, one set of factors and events. For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, as St. Paul writes (to this day, not fully understood in my opinion) to the Corinthians. The organic breath, rhythm of creation, circular affair in which one’s waste material is someone else’s necessity, vibrates, ripples in its concentric waves spreading outward ad infinitum. From the life cycle of a beetle to that of a star, the same connections, the same story at play.
Other poems in this issue explore this idea of the everlasting, ever-changing, interconnected and interdependent sphere we call life. The idea of being part of a non-sentient, truly impartial superorganism capable of absorbing, recycling our efforts as somebody else’s byproduct, whether eaten or eater, with no judgment, captivates us like a light at the end of a tunnel of dogmas and, frankly, fairy tales; a sign of the times perhaps, when not much else really brightens our way and our presence here but the dead-end tunnel of our own mortality, misconduct and miseries.
What about the poet, waste trafficker and forage manager par excellence? An old silly riddle: visualize a forest with no animals or people, no eyes or ears but trees. One day a tree falls. Does it make a sound? That’s what poets are for.
Review by Kathryn de Leon
The story of the Creation, we follow it with God as Mouse, but a surprise at the end to find out that Poet is actually God.