Let’s start with the obvious:
no one wants to be found
when only dirt-dreaming
gravediggers are looking anyway.
It’s better to leave simply
than to simply leave or stay
too long. Better to be a rat
crawling beneath ice-seamed streets,
gnawing on discarded hours
and half-forgotten songs, waiting
for the three-legged world
to shrug and turn away,
so you can scurry from your hole.
How easy it is to hide,
drunk on mud and blind,
so long as you believe
that you are not the hole.
Peter Grandbois is the author of seven previous books. His poems, stories, and essays have appeared in over eighty journals. His plays have been performed in St. Louis, Columbus, Los Angeles, and New York. He is a senior editor at Boulevard magazine and teaches at Denison University in Ohio.
