there was a little rat who dressed up in little
outfits and went outside to perform his little tasks like
going to rat school and nibbling and marching up logs
he slept on tea bags and he wore frilly dress coats
and dainty black loafers for he was an alternative rat
interested in alternative things like shutting eyes
and hanging out by the air conditioners and gray skies
he curled his whiskers and he didn’t like to eat scraps
he thought food had souls and energy the other little rats told him
not to be so picky and to wash his whiskers more but he didn’t listen
to them he was a little annoying like that until there was a new
little rat in school and she braided her whiskers together and talked
to the cockroaches for she was an alternative rat too and the two little
rats started talking and having a fling they would meet
in the left gutter by the Smiths’ red front door and whenever the big
people would walk by the little rats would hug their little arms
around each other and crawl further up the gutter breathing the same little
wafts of air and then sighing the same air out into each other’s little mouths
until one day they got adopted by a weird alternative family
who wanted little rats as pets and they shared their own bedroom
with clothespins on the floor playing hide and seek and drawing
up the curtains admiring the angled view and never asking for more.