January 13, 2026

Jay C. Davis 

This poem was chosen by Garrison Keeler and featured in May 2005.  

 Knives, or the Way to a Man's Heart

It's been a great couple of weeks for staying
home and sharpening my knives,
and each one has a perfect edge now.
All this honing has really whetted my appetite.
I feel a keen hunger, for freshly
chopped and diced and
julienned and sliced and
shoestringed and French cut and
coarsely chopped and minced
meat and vegetables,
filets of fish and beef and chicken,
carrots, celery, blanched broccoli and
fresh onions, garlic, peppers—sweet and hot—
strawberries, peaches, all the tropical fruits,
parsley, thyme, rosemary and
every variety of fresh herbs.
Strop, strop, chop chop.

If you open a box and drop in
100 mice with one piece of cheese
and one small hole to escape,
and wait for the scratching to stop,
one mouse only will exit the hole,
cleaning his claws against his glossy coat,
grinning in the spotlight, mugging
for the paparazzi and nibbling his cheese.
Sociologists will call him alpha,
and Psychologists will call him self-actualized,
and Calvinists will call him resolute and pious.
Dieticians say he's non-lactose-intolerant,
and I suppose Political Scientists will call him the Voters' Mandate.
Gamblers will call him Lucky,
and what I'll call him is the Capitalist.

The experiment will come to an end
and the glorious multi-nominal mouse
will have his head snipped off
and disposed of by a blonde lab technician
with sterile rubber coated fingers,
who's interning for the summer
and hates this part of her job the most
and just looks forward to going home,
where her boyfriend will be precisely now
starting to prepare a special dinner
for the two of them—
vegetables and meat,
knives flashing, water steaming,
and oil searing in the pots and pans,
in the kitchen that's every bit as hot as Hell.

                                            Jay C. Davis

I had to give Annie back her car today, she needed it, but before I did I went to the rookery where it is winter. There are a couple places on the water where the otters have  been around. Their holes in the ice give  them away.

I wrote  the first draft of Jay's obituary for Kelley and sent it to her to do with what she wants.  Writing obituaries is an interesting exercise in emotional focus.   

I'm also  trying to see a GoFundMe get launched today to raise the 3000 I need to complete the  act of owning this car.  It has to be gifted to me. Annie is being, not only generous, but a stronghold while we go through this.  

My two bird interactions today were kind of interesting.  I watched  this  hawk pair soar high across two hay fields, circling the edges and tops of the spruce  and pine.  They will be mating in a couple of weeks, these two may have been getting an early start.

The  other experience is that when I got out of Annie's car in my driveway there was  a dead chickadee lying on the side of the lawn in a place that made no sense.  I do not know what caused its  death.  I will look up the  chickadee symbolism, but I found it interesting.   I have not moved the dead bird.  It is not harmed at all.  

I feel vulnerable.  Not sure exactly why  tonight, except  there are too  many unwell people around  me whom I care so much about.

I have therapy tomorrow for the first time in over a month, no wonder I am wobbly.