The cockroaches are humping, impregnating each other.
Dozens of foamy white eggs
spill out the back end, crushed between my fingers and a paper towel.
Die you insect, whetting Satan’s appetite! Greedy, obnoxious beast of self-absorption. I destroy you. Spirit of survival.
Feral cat with empty, horrified look.
Are you still confused about what put you here? Wonder is not in your kitten soul.
Only scavenging what you can.
Soft, doe-eyed child.
Watching mama, pressing into her coat. Bundled up on the cold street
You wait for the Super to unlock the door.
Warm, you are
protected from sirens, the bus. The arguments. For now, you are coddled and new to this zoo.
At a soirée downtown the tigers smirk. All eyes track prey at such gatherings.
Temperature-controlled, a woman behind her mask twists her wrist to display a royal flush with ornamental fan in hand.
“You make the city run,” proclaims the Mayor.
In the Carnival of City Dwellers
we are told to believe luck makes things turn. But hunger drives the subway and the taxi cab. This is why we reach for the familiar.
Kindness warms on bitter days. We make the city run.
C.J. Lake is a Brooklyn-based poet and educator whose work has appeared in BarBar and THAT Literary Review. A high school anatomy teacher in Williamsburg, she is also a NSF Climate Change Fellow at Columbia University and previously served as a Teacher Park Ranger with the National Park Service at Floyd Bennett Field. Her writing includes reporting for the Chicago Tribune and Eugene Register-Guard, as well as a recognized one-act children’s play, Seafood Veranda. She focuses on vivid imagery and inventive wordplay. More at dabadelic.com.
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