For The Chicago Rats That Cross My Path Walking Home

by Michael Dean

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in my february, in my body of bad days, i found myself
            breaking bricks through concert walls, hungry

            for belief, with golden knives & wilted skull.
fate, with her filament eyes & glass teeth, led me down

the four a.m. alleys with bound hands, but i am learning hard truths
            in my aging youth & i no longer want to feel the pink corners

            of empty music dig bottles hole-deep through my back
after tripping over monday’s beer-stale air. this song sounds

like a dream i haven't heard, yet it ends like a life imitating itself
            like the quiet strangers i passed walking home late: the rabbits

            with their cotton-plush tails & exterminated rats
multiplying their devoured corpses into fertile metaphor.

into the names of words. into the forty degree nights i spent
            leaping into intersections i hated for the taste of drunk

            food. into the frigid air-like filth matting my long-dead hair.
i only believe that every ghost must want the same thing

a warm body of food sinking into another body.
            a net guiding them to safety.

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Michael Dean is a poet based in Chicago. They are pursuing an M.A. in Writing and Publishing at DePaul University. When they are not in class, they enjoy watching Lake Michigan at night and collecting new words.