Boy Larkin’s Pet Peeve
Susan McLean

I had a goldfish in a bowl.
It acted bored, like me.
It swam around without a goal
and snuffed it rapidly.

I had a budgie in a cage.
It molted in despair
and dropped dead at an early age,
its small claws clutching air.

I had a bunny in a hutch.
It hunched and tried to hide.
Although I didn’t like it much,
I hated when it died.

So, Mum and Dad, please grant my wish:
don’t buy a cat or pup;
no bunnies, birds, or sodding fish.
They all go belly up.

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Susan’s notes: “Sadly, my experiences with pet goldfish, parakeets, and rabbits are not very different from those I imagine for Philip Larkin as a boy, though I was lucky enough to have a beloved dog that actually managed to last for about eight years. Given Larkin’s often morose and astringent poems, I thought that his experiences with pets might not have gone well. But in one poem he showed a tenderness for a dead hedgehog he had accidentally killed with a lawnmower, which led me to believe that a wish not to have more pets would have come mainly from his sadness at losing them. This poem originally appeared in Light.”

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Susan McLean is a retired English professor from Southwest Minnesota State University. She has published two poetry collections, The Best Disguise and The Whetstone Misses the Knife, and one book of translations of Latin poems by Martial, Selected Epigrams. Her third poetry book, Daylight Losing Time, is forthcoming from Able Muse Press.

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Boy Larkin’s Pet Peeve Susan McLean

Boy Larkin’s Pet Peeve
Susan McLean