The mouse doesn’t really bother anyone. It doesn’t
go around holding up banks or shooting people
in the face or locking them up in dank jail cells
and sticking electric prods to their genitals. It doesn’t
build jet fighters and bomb our cities in the name
of peace in the middle of the night while we are sleeping.
It doesn’t plant toy mines to blow our children’s arms off.
All the mouse wants is to share with us some shelter,
food, even the warmth of its nervous body. Yet we plug up
the cupboards so it can’t eat, and we chase it around
the living room with a broom and remove all the chairs
till it has nowhere to hide; then we club it to death
as it squeals. Or we set up traps with something it likes
to lure it into strangulation and burst its eyes out
of its head. And against what? A few light scratchings
heard in the ceiling once in a while keeping us company
at night? Two or three crumbs of bread taken from
the kitchen floor? And after the mouse, there are the ants
to be poisoned, the bees to be gassed and burned.
Later, the dandelions to be choked by spraying. And after
that, after that, there must be something after that.
The Mouse and the Human
The latest from america
It has come as a surprise to many in the Holy See that the Vatican bank fired a newlywed couple, with three young children between them, after a new internal bank regulation went into effect barring workplace marriages.
Pope Francis offered his condolences saying, “In commending the souls of the deceased to the loving mercy of almighty God, I offer my deepest sympathies to the families who are now mourning the loss of a loved one.”
A Homily for the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, by Father Terrance Klein
“The church is not against deportations per se, but there are several conditions that need to be in place.”
According to Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition:
poem—a composition in verse;
verse—a line of metrical writing;
metrical—relating to, or composed in meter;
meter—systematically arranged and measured rhythm in verse;
poetry—metrical writing, verse.
The selection made by the editors of America may be creative writing of a thought, but is it poetry?