A Mouse's Punch Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

A quiet corner of my balcony
turned beach shore
for tree-filtered and sifted sun

spins a ropy silence
tethered to a high-shouldered tree
with large arms bulging out
with a thousand green ribbons

of leaves eating the fruits
of shimmering beams flung over
by the sun riding

a sheet of cool breeze
breathing out a slow-rolling wind

from branches dropping
with a shady parasol's canopy.

(ii)

My beach is a stretch
of beaming car roofs
and sporadic shrubs rolling on

close-shaven lawns
undulating with color
and waves from stifled

engines cranking up
my thirst to read a book;
to thrust me to knolls

and hills and trees
and grasses creeping
and rolling into the fire
of red and yellow

flowers burning into no gray ashes,
but sturdy silver and cream
of a bright gleaming day polished
to a soft glow to bloat
flower pots on the balcony
into candy apple and maroon buckets

pouring out ocean
and cyan flowers standing
on a taupe ruggy cemented floor.

(iii)

Still not glued
to my selected book from
an old carton of keeps,
I begin to read blotches
of cement on a scarred floor

as crawling arthropods
and tiny roaches,
squiggles of small scripts take me

to a chapter on vermin
that spin gloss and smoothness
on their natural coats
floating on their bodies

like the silver patches
of an evening sky metamorphosing
into beige patches

of air about to shed
off dark gray smudges
and put on flint and beige wings.

(iv)

A flint-hued mouse
scampers off to a corner
and races back straight
into a metal trap that rattles off

with bleeding death, the glossy
animal's quivering struggle

punching a hole through a page
of my book standing

like a blade of pity shattering
glassy air into the shards
of a wasted afternoon.