Rat Meat Blues

Juanito’s life was a yellow tulip
stomped and smeared into the floor
he’d caught his beautiful lady doing
hideous unbelievable atrocious acts
 
Zoe was eating rats, she ate them raw
or cooked and attempted to get him to
eat some of the delicious rodents, Zoe
said the best were pregnant with tender
 
Babies inside, Juanito hoped to get
her therapy or to a doctor that could fix
whatever was making her crave rat meat,
Zoe started placing food in her lips
 
While sleeping, the rats would crawl all
over her body and she would scoop them
with a net into a cage, Zoe could not
understand Juanito’s revulsion, he left
Juanito listened to Red Headed Stranger,
which usually lifted his mood, the bloody
mood sank into the darkness.

---

38 Buffalos

Hammering down rye whiskey boiler makers
After eating cheap pig meat tacos was never a
Good idea, I woke up my pockets were inside
Out and underwear was on backwards and yanked

Up into the crack of my ass, a rat was gnawing
On my big toe, I was dreaming of a lady in Saigon
And trying to remember if Geronimo ever went
To the Alamo, I found a roll of 1938 Buffalo nickels.

---

Walpurgis Night

Life is a rental car
Life is two left sweaty bowling shoes
Life is Cherry Cavendish Borkum Riff tobacco
Life is the arrest of Melquiades Segura
And the jailbreak by Billy the Kid
Life is the nipple game

Witches and warlocks flying
And dancing in the sky

Winos seeking escape from life
Puking in the litter box of life

Agent orange, napalm, and Willy Peter
Catapulting black plague afflicted bodies
Death Death Death, take a nap motherfuckers.

Catfish McDaris is a 30-year small press and 3-year Army artillery veteran, from Albuquerque and Milwaukee. His work is in the Special Archives Collection at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is listed on Wikipedia. His ancestors were related to Wilma Mankiller from the Cherokee Nation. Currently, he sells wigs in a dangerous Milwaukee neighborhood. Second day on the job, a lady dropped her purse and a loaded 357 rolled out on the floor, pointed at him. He was also nominated for a 2021 Pulitzer Prize but didn’t make the final cut.