THE NAME OF ACTION

by QUINN FRANZEN

From the cat’s mouth, I pulled a mouse.
Its eye a punctured planet,
a pink foam, and its chest so fast.
I laid it on a stepping stone
folded in old newsprint, lifted a brick, and paused
as the paper pulsed with breath.

Suffering’s value is the unknown variable. I know a syringe
of pentobarbital will preclude that question
for the cat. I know we’re advised not to love
the spotted lanternflies that cluster
at the base of the hemlock, or the driveway centipede
that shimmers with ants, slipping itself in slow knots.

And people? I can’t help loving the cousin who remains
always twenty nine clutching a birthday pistol,
the uncle who eats nothing but whiskey.
A family concern: whether it’s better to suffer
long or suffer short. I didn’t bring the brick down.
Mercy? —

			                    I didn’t want the death
on my hands. I do not want to admit my strategies
are strategies. I do not want to admit it is only
a thin rhyme, a kind of vanity that holds me up.
At the end of my slackened arm, 
the garden brick crawls with small life.

Quinn Franzen is an O’ahu-raised actor, poet, and educator. He has poems published or forthcoming in Poetry, Pleiades, The Journal, Bat City Review, Barrelhouse, and elsewhere. A Poetry Editor at Bear Review, he received his MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. He has received support from Tin House, Community of Writers, and Brooklyn Poets. His acting work can be seen on TV, on- and off-Broadway, and in regional theaters across the country. Quinn lives in Brooklyn.

Next (Khaled Mattawa) >
< Previous (Kyle G. Dargan)