1
I think my little cat is in heat
a new raw note in her voice as
she paws and frets.
2
Women’s problems for the first time.
I’m overcome w/ motherly sentiment.
Kotex. Midol. How To Tell Your Daughter.
That’s what I need: pamphlets, literature.
Kimberly-Clark, send me all you’ve got.
3
Stay in the warm nunnery of my house—
it’s only a passing fit, my dear. Soon
you won’t suspect what you’ve missed.
4
Dreaming of Tough-Cat Clancey,
moved away from upstairs.
5
When I love a man
I don’t notice the weather.
I drink wine by the fireplace
Wherever I go.
6
I’m out of love, of sorts today.
The angle of the branches gives me pain.
The twigs are bare neurons
flinching from the wind.
7
The voices of the birds are another
kind of nerve-end–mine, for one:
they vibrate raw in my solar plexus.
I feed them bread, all I’ve got:
Profile, Roman Meal
all over the back yard.
8
They like it.
A pigeon lands on the window sill.
My cat claws & screams, her eyes
grow round & several kinds of blue.
9
So all yr spasms were not for love.
Strictly for blood–somebody else’s.
10
McMurray gave her a pheasant
feather in late October. So.
She’s been practicing all winter.
11
Bitchy cat.
I’m out of love w/ you too.
12
So what’ll it be, friends, crumbs or fangs?
13
The pigeons are wise to choosing their time.
They take my charities w/ motherly grace.
14
I think they really like me.
Leave me gifts, in fact.
My porch holds a monolith
of dung & feathers.
Prodigious. Magnificent.