Because you are not the admired nightingale.
Because you are not the noble doe.
Because you are not the picturesque
ermine, armadillo, or bat.
They’ve been written, and I don’t know their song
the way I know your scuttling between walls.
The scent of your collapsed corpse rotting
beneath floorboards. Your frantic squeals
as you wrestle at your own fur from glue traps,
ripping flesh from skin in an attempt to survive.

Because in July of ’97, you birthed a legion
on 109th, swarmed from behind dumpsters,
made our street infamous for something
other than crack. Shoot, We nicknamed you “Cat-killer,”
raced with you through open hydrants,
screeched like you when Siete blasted
aluminum bat into your brethren’s skull—
the sound like slapped down dominoes. You reigned
that summer, Rat
And even when they sent exterminators,
set flame to garbage, half dead, and on fire, you
pushed on.

Because even though you’re an inelegant, simple,
a mammal bottom-feeder, always fucking famished
little ugly thing that feasts on what crumbs fall
from the corner of our mouths, but you live
uncuddled, uncoddled, can’t be bought at Petco
and fed to fat snakes because you are not the maze-rat
of labs: pale, pretty-eyed, trained.
You raise yourself sharp-fanged, clawed, scarred,
patched dark—because of this alone he should love you.
But look at the beast, the poet tells me.
The table is already full,
and Rat, you are not a right, worthy thing.
Every time they say that
take your gutter, your dirt coat, fill this page, Rat
Scrape your underbelly against street, concrete, you better
squeak and raise the whole world, Rat;
let loose a plague of words, Rat,
and remind them that you, that I—
we are worthy of every poem.
Here.