Your Pet Turtle

January Web Feature

Your Pet Turtle
–William Doreski

We agree that nothing is absolute, not the dark of closets, not clock-faces, not the stink of cooking fat. But we disagree on the exceptions. You place your plastic crucifix on the wall and claim that it represents the ultimate. I prop Wallace Stevens’ Collected Poems against the bassinette to make the baby cry. You prod my undercarriage with the skewer you used for lamb until I objected to cooking the young of innocent animals. I scratch you very slightly with a genuine Thoreau pencil I bought in a rare book shop forty years ago. You respond with the word “Animula.” I reply with “Condensed.” We agree that if we laugh it has to be aloud.

The room sweetens with the breath of your tiny pet turtle. It walked all the way from the Caribbean to live in your terrarium. Soon the immigration police will arrive to arrest us for importing disease from the furthest reach of the galaxy. We will explain that nothing is absolute, not even the furthest reach of the galaxy, and that law enforce peters out beyond the limits of the atmosphere. They will arrest your plastic crucifix for violating the religious clause of the Bill of Rights but allow your turtle to remain with you until a judge hears its case.

 

 

 

William Doreski recently retired after years of teaching at Keene State College in New Hampshire (USA). His most recent book of poetry is The Suburbs of Atlantis (2013). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors.  His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in various e and print journals and in several collections, most recently A Black River, A Dark Fall (2018)