Sold by the first stanza
For a friend who's stressed… here's the beginning of "The Animals" by Geoffrey Lehmann, in a recent New Yorker, the first issue I've managed to knock off in months… "A 'domesticated bearded dragon $400' / is not my idea of an animal companion. / A calf asleep on a double bed, perhaps, / or a hare with long ears / crouched under a mahogany sideboard, / thumping the floor. / Or a koala that climbed up a four-poster bed / surprising a seventeen-year-old in her nightie. …"
Says one blog, "I really dislike this one but I've read it three times so I suppose that means there's something compelling in it." Sitting here with mint chocolate chip on my tongue and an ice cream scoop upside down in a glass of water, I'm going with the hare under the sideboard.
(Oh, and don't read the rest of the poem. Just realized it's a bummer.)
(Sorry about that one. The ice cream was distracting.)
