
This selection, chosen by Guest Curator Callista Buchen, is from Holding my Selves Together by Margaret Rozga, released by Cornerstone Press in 2021.
A Grin Before the Cat Appears
Alice falls deep
into the natural world,
but finds a hookah-smoking
caterpillar with no sense
of the future, of its own future,
finds a grin before the cat appears,
finds a flood, finds disaster
after ecological disaster, finds
a tea party where no one is invited
to take a place at the empty chairs,
finds tyranny served by minions
shallow as playing cards, finds
animals used as game pieces, finds
all quarrel so dreadfully
one can’t hear one’s-self speak, finds
only one way of settling all difficulties.
At bottom, such a world.


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