The Race

1

The man keeps a fox

in his freezer. The fox

is wrapped in a plastic

bag, which is wrapped

in another plastic bag,

which is neatly knotted

at the top. The fox

is small and rests

between a TV

dinner and a gallon

of mint ice cream.

Each night, the man

removes the bag

from his freezer,

unties the knot,

and lays the fox down

on his living room floor.

The man, crouching

over the fox, examines

its fur, inspects its

paws and its teeth.

After some time,

he folds the fox

into the bags,

and places it back

inside the freezer.

2

After the man has retired to bed,

Fox opens his eyes, lifts up his cold head,

crawls out of the bags and creeps 'cross the floor.

He knows the man sleeps -- he hears the man snore.

Fox sits for hours, fixed on Man's breath,

watching for changes, smelling for death.

And with the first signs of light, Fox slinks away,

back to his place beneath the ice tray.

The strange race continues just how it began:

the man and the fox and the fox and the man.

Wasn't Me

I was sitting in the air on an airplane next to a lady who smelled like hairspray and vodka. In her lap stood a tiny little toy dog, which I didn't notice until I was just reading and I got that feeling you get when you feel some eyes on you somewhere so I put down my book and I looked all around until I found that little dog making eyes at me. We looked and looked at each other and normally I don't stare but I thought, it's only a dog,

but since that day on the airplane, I've never once stared at another dog, big or small because after about a minute and a half of staring at this one, there was a blink of red light in its eyes, then a clicking sound, and then the damn dog blew up right there on the lady's lap and I thought she might turn and slap me in the face or something but no one said a word so I plucked the fur from my ginger-ale and kept on reading The Origin of Species.

The Waiting Room

Prints of barren

trees and

hot air balloons hang

on the walls

in these holes

where we're stuck-- living

like pigs in bowls

of wilted petals,

wasting evenings writing

poems, feeding

on pills and jellied salmon

rubbing our nipples right down

to the bone--

we tug at furniture that is screwed

to the floor, we are bored, so

flipping through a few pages,

we cross and uncross our legs, yawn,

then we blink and we're gone.