Mark Fogarty believes, like Shelley, that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. He is a poet, musician, and journalist from Rutherford, New Jersey. He is the managing editor of The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow and emcees the monthly poetry/music reading at GainVille Café, also in Rutherford. He has read his poetry extensively in New York and New Jersey and has had poetry in more than 20 publications. He is the author of six books of poetry from White Chickens Press: Myshkin’s Blues, Peninsula, Phantom Engineer, Sun Nets, Continuum: The Jaco Poems and The Tall Women’s Dance. He has also published broadsheets of two individual poems: “Wedding Song” and “A Prayer for Jordan.”

To the Mouse That Died in My Coffee Carrier
By Mark Fogarty

What were you looking for?
It wasn’t an egg carton, though I grant you
You could mistake one for the other.
You were crumpled up, poor schmeckle,
With your fur blown straight back,
As if your hair was styled for a movie,
As if you’d stuck your tiny claw
In a socket and died from electrocution.

It must have proved too hard
To climb to the kitchen counter
For the crumbs I might have left.
You figured, I’ll rest here just a second.
I hope you had a second to look around
And sigh: At least I’m in a warm place,
At least I’m in a soft place.
No more pain. No more winter!

I hate winter too.
And the coffee has warmed me so far,
And jangled my frigid nerves
To spark this tiny elegy
From the small electricity of the caffeine.

Wait. Maybe that straightened fur
Didn’t come from the jolt of death.
Maybe something stroked your hair
To comfort you as death came on.