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Anderson

Janet Kuypers
6/4/12

I started having pets
only when I went away to college,
the option didn’t seem there for me
until I was on my own.

I’d go to the pet superstore
and buy some feeder goldfish,
twenty-five cents each
for a little bowl in my dorm.

There was no air filter,
and since I didn’t know any better,
the twenty-five cent goldfish
would die, so I started to name them

after ex-boyfriends,
so when they died
I wouldn’t feel bad when I
flushed them down the toilet.

But then I decided
on a new-and-improved pet,
one I could name as my own,
one that could crawl all over me.

So I got this little salamander.
I named my newt Anderson
(named after a performance artist,
trust me, not a politician).

So Anderson sat in a goldfish bowl,
crawling around to the shrimp pellets
I dropped in for food, and I’d bring
Anderson out to crawl up my arm.

And I felt like I accomplished something
with my first pet Anderson.
I had him for a year until
I went home for one summer

That summer I traveled around
the country, so I told my sister
that all she had to do
was drop food pellets in

once every few days
so Anderson would have food.
So after my trip to Arizona,
where it was so hot I could literally

smell my flesh burn, my sister
told me Anderson was missing.
She didn’t take Anderson from the bowl,
Anderson couldn’t crawl out,

but Anderson escaped.
I wondered if she did this because
she didn’t want to care for a newt,
but really, this wasn’t hard work...

And two months later,
a cleaning lady cleaned the basement,
held up an Anderson carcass
and asked if this was someone

we were looking for. That’s when
I realized, I got out of this place,
and my little Anderson
was trying to do the same.

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