And the Rat Laughed - By Nava Semel Page 0,30

I sat there at my PC and sent it out to my whole address book. And once you go into the site, I’d like you to pass the poems on, to your own mailing list.

I think it’s important for as many people as possible to get to be the other way around.

It’s really easy to get into the site. Simply write www.girl&rat.com, and you’re in.

On second thoughts, I have an idea about how to get this material to as many people as possible as quickly as possible. Remember the chain letters, where all sorts of people you don’t know send them to you and you just delete them? My grandmother told me that when she was little, in the last century, they used to send them by snail mail. If you wanted to make sure the message got passed on, you’d add a header and a footer saying: “Unless you pass this on, you will suffer a terrible fate.”

You’ve got to admit, intimidation is a very effective way of making sure that things don’t get lost.

The more I read, the less I understand, but it doesn’t matter, because I’ve already linked up with whoever lives in this upside down world, and you don’t have to understand everything. It’s enough to feel things. Like the two of us do, even though we’ve never met.

You won’t believe this, but I even printed the poems out. Hard copy. Which I never do. Because I had this urge to feel the words themselves, to know that whatever appears in writing really does exist. I turned off the PC. I even unplugged it and lay there in the dark. Suddenly it seemed as if the words were actually appearing on my body – like a luminescent tattoo.

The nausea didn’t stop until daybreak.

In the morning, my parents found it all, and freaked out. My mother screamed that the material was warped and that the poems were sick. And as far as my father was concerned, whoever had created the site was a basket case, and should be kept as far away from human society as possible, because whoever it was had been an accomplice to a sordid plot. My parents even threatened to go to the Internet Squad and have them block access – which is why I’m writing to you right away, to make sure we circulate these poems to as many people as possible before they close in on us.

When they scream at me, I simply turn my back.

I sit there looking at the pages – real paper – and read it from the end to the beginning and back again, even though it’s obvious that the end isn’t really the end. I lie there, and someone is digging. At a depth I’ve never seen before. And I didn’t really mean to ... I mean, it isn’t mine, and suddenly it is. Without meaning to, I saw my own world decompose into the most basic concepts, and I’m a little girl and a rat too. I can remember it all by heart already, just in case it gets erased, though it doesn’t make sense for anything that’s been transmitted from person to person to ever be erased.

I couldn’t resist adding a line of my own because I have a strange feeling that that’s just what the poet, or the owner, or whoever it was would have wanted. Because only by reacting will we remember.1

I think people can hear me all over the world. All day long I’ve felt like crying, but I’ve got to tell you, Stash, that I’ve never laughed like this in my whole life. Suddenly, I could hear a strange sound coming out of me, as if a weird creature was laughing somewhere in the dark.

Ending

I so much want to be dead

How can I get to be dead

It isn’t enough to want to be dead

And it isn’t enough to be dead

Because even when I am dead

It won’t be over

Arithmetic

One two. That’s that.

One child. One rat.

More Arithmetic

Guess what it found:

One child in the ground

Addition – Subtraction

Mother, Father, Servant – three

A little girl – a family

Servant’s gone

And Father, Mother

Gone one after another

Little girl, no one’s around

Lives alone beneath the ground

Big – Little

I have a big pit outside me

I have a little pit within

The big pit is mine

The little pit is the Stefan’s

Why

Why potatoes?

Because.

Why lice?

Because.

Why darkness?

Because.

And why the Stefan?

How Many

How many potatoes?

This many.

How many lice?

This many.

How much darkness?

This much.

And how much the Stefan?

Male – Female

Lucky you’re a he-rat

And not a she-rat

Lucky you’re a he-animal

And