Cartoon Mouse

recycled content

New episode of Advance Answering Techniques. This one’s a little different. Typically the questions we receive are from folks who seem to assume that we, the hosts of the podcast, should answer them. But we have a certain interrogator about whom we just cannot make assumptions.

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An old poem about a cartoon mouse.

SPEEDY GONZALEZ IN DECLINE

Speedy walks through
the streets of the city,
yesterday’s heat still echoing
in the round smooth houses
ready for the slanted sun,
as he remembers being fast.

Up ahead he sees a crow
perched on the curb.
He turns down an alley.

A woman leans out of a window
and in the glowing hands she extends
out into the air

she holds a mousetrap.
The metal arm and balsa plank
clench against a body.

She lifts the arm, the body drops
into the street.
Too small to splat or thud
it makes a blurrier sound
we don’t have a word for.

Speedy tells himself not to look
and has this thought:
“Why’d they put so much savor
in the unsavory?”

He thinks about how long
he stands at the traps
smooth round squares of cheese
and how it feels—
a newer feeling for him—
to want something
he can’t have.