Poetry

Here come our two cats for my breakfast,

but I am not eating, rather looking down,

making the pen move with familiar loops 

and a certain steady slide across the page.

Cats bore easily when they see that ink smears

and doesn’t taste a thing like chicken. So

the leader pushes her nose into an African violet,

which I can’t allow. Given her way, she will destroy

leaves and get soil all over the table, along with 

pretty purple flowers. I pluck her from the pot,

but not before a clump of dirt hits the table 

and she finds it didn’t taste a thing like turkey,

which was what she had on her little kitty brain. 

Off the two go to explore the kitchen, tails entwined, 

leaving me in solitude with nothing more than

steam rising from the electric facility at the end

of Korean War Veterans Bridge and downtown

Nashville waking to another day of rain.

Now I hear the cats discussing how bacon is cured

and the virtue of Costco’s brand, Kirkland,

fully cooked, naturally wood smoked, thick cut,

microwaveable, pre-sliced, ready in a mere 55 seconds,

reminding me we can have bacon for breakfast.

P.S. and by the way, I cook one piece for each cat. 

Nothing is real in October!

There is a cat on the roof—

my cat.

He sits there watching me on the porch⎯

maybe thinking

my woman.

Either way⎯

the two of us

loving the wild light wind makes

moving through trees, 

casting shadows on the patio

then drenching us in bright light.

Leaves turn the color

of pomegranates.

Birds call back and forth 

busy with business of the day.

Nothing is real 

but this savage joy 

in a world I have made for myself

and is as arguable as color 

flung from a palette

on a morning 

when the wind is up. 

‍

She is silver, signifying wealth. 

Each blue hair 

is tipped with shine,

and she lets me know she thinks

I’m a dud, even though I’m the one

who put a toy mouse stuffed

with catnip into the bathtub

so that she could slip, paw, tumble

and chase it all about.

She chews each corner 

of my journal, has been known

to stick her nose in my coffee,

fish shrimp out of a temporarily

unattended bowl of steaming

Top Ramen, and steal

anything she has a mind to steal 

from my kitchen counter.

She has the mentality of 

a five-year-old with an awful

case of the terrible twos.

Kaylee is a Korat. Google that,

then be filled with wonder, 

dear reader, at the mental 

instability of this author. 

I’m not happy, I told a therapist, I have no place to write.  

I didn’t mention a friend said I could use her guesthouse, 

a church down the road offered a pew, my husband said 

I could use his studio, but those won’t do. I need solitude, 

no one waltzing through on the way to life. I can’t write 

with a cat in my lap, I’ve tried bedrooms, living room…. 

I would be happy with a place to write, 

but it has to be the right place, no one smiling, 

asking if I need a refill on my coffee. No! 

I was brought up better than to say, Just go away. 

So, tonight I’ve come to the fifth floor deck of our loft. 

Far below, notes from a cello waft up and settle around me. 

It’s summer solstice, my birthday, damn near dark. 

A bat just flew by and katydids are rubbing their wings 

together or whatever they do to make that razor noise. 

I find them distracting, but not quite as distracting 

as a cat in my lap making little star feet all over my body. 

My birthday, so many now, it’s become an embarrassment. 

I think about my mother, dead fifty years, how after the funeral, 

her sister said, Your mother always was a turd of misery. 

I am not my mother.