from Abundance

by Leila Walker

On the trash edge of the sidewalk someone has spraypainted in blue: STOP RAT FOOD. I like to imagine it’s a mispunctuated invitation: “Stop, rat. Food!” As if I could conjure welcome

out of nothing but the leftovers of language, the blank space of a breath. Once, caught under an awning in a sudden storm, when the sidewalk ran to river, I watched the fattest rat

glide into a storm drain with all the delight of a creature heading home, grasp the grate with his back paws, and lower himself, slick and graceful, down into the sewers. But in truth, this rat,

he was already home. The rain had changed the border, brought the sewers up to him.

 LEILA WALKER is a queer New Yorker and assistant professor at Queens College. Her poetry and fiction have been published in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Hypnerotizinia Polyphony, Synapse, The Gallatin Review, and perhappened.