The Mole

 

by Angeline Schellenberg

German Schnapps

 

Alice has gotten used to the mole behind the sofa by now.

 

Her cat is too arthritic to be much help chasing it away. When the mole ran in from the garage as Alice was carrying in the groceries, she’d nearly tripped, her throat making that eerrup noise as she caught her breath. At least it wasn’t a snake.

One could get used to almost anything, she’d learned. The streak of pencil lead in her palm since the day her Kindergarten teacher startled her. The kink in her neck since college. The pink wall in the closet that she always intended to repaint. The cat’s diarrhea. The bust of Friedrich Schiller that has started talking to her.

 

She doesn’t mind, really. She’s even beefed up on her German. Alice gets down on her belly to peer into the darkness under the sofa. If only the old poet were as good at listening.

 

About the author

Angeline Schellenberg is the author of the Manitoba Book Award-winning series of linked poems about autism Tell Them It Was Mozart (Brick Books, 2016) and the elegy collection Fields of Light and Stone (University of Alberta Press, 2020). Angeline hosts the Speaking Crow reading series in Winnipeg, Canada. angelineschellenberg.wordpress.com