TWO BABY MICE

fingernail-sized, flamingo-
colored, hairless, blind

lying on the smooth wooden bottom
of a drawer, suckling rhythmically at the air

their mother ran away, they’re getting
cold, movements slowing

I have to stop my fingers from unbuttoning
my shirt, my hands from gently scooping them

to place at my bared breast
their tiny half-closed mouths fumbling around

my nipple like my own child did:
before all else, a mammal

AMERICAN PARTY

They return to the pond
where they were born.
Or they’re flattened into
crisps on the road.

My mother puts on rubber gloves,
I can’t bring myself to touch them,
a nurse who was raised on a dairy farm.

She and my son scoop up a pair
with his child-size rake.
She wants to take them apart
to see if they are conjoined twin frogs.
They’re toads, I say, you’re interrupting their most intimate act.
Though this is a guess
that I will google later.

Unlike the elusive peepers
American toads clutch each other in public.
Floating by the edge of the pond
their eggs brazenly trail and mingle
with those of twenty other swinging couples.

That night we watch American Toads Mating on YouTube.
Their sound from the phone blends
with their real-life calls from outside.
They shamelessly puff out their throats
one after another like a wave
at a baseball game.

In the morning they’re still there.
Warty skin, translucent webbed
feet kicking in unison like they’re just
swimming up to the poolside bar.
Clouds of fertilized eggs will become
swarms of tadpoles in a few days.
A fish can eat a thousand
in a mouthful. 

BIO: Lyndsey Kelly Weiner is a graduate of Stonecoast MFA. She teaches writing at Syracuse University.