bait ovenbird My dreams are mice. They find obscure neural gaps and slip through, their ribcages collapsing to squeeze into the most vestigial places. They are too swift to catch by their licorice whip tails. They hold the imaginal hostage, carry it deep into the walls where I can hear them chewing on cast off subconscious crumbs. I kick the baseboards, hoping I might scare them into the light, but they just go deeper, follow electrical cable and hot water piping back to their nests where they nurse their pups with milk made from the residue of my night’s narratives. I set traps with triggers made of memory, and when I wake I hear the tell-tale gnash of metal jaws closing, but I find only tufts of hair, a toe, a splotch of gore, nothing that tells the story of what breathed here. Tonight I will leave bait: sprinkle of oats, smear of lard, sunflower seeds, crusts gone hard. I will coax my dreams with the promise of breakfast, make a noose of my forefinger and thumb to loop over the filigreed vertebrae of each tender neck. And snap them. 250530 what's it to you? who go blather from