Issue/Publication:

Poem

June 2, 2004

My cat is dead. Crushed by a speeding car

both on their way home. I know

because my wife had called him

heard his jingling bell

and traffic stop a moment

on our road

that goes nowhere

on its uphill circular course.

Phone rings- 11:00 pm –three beeps

someone at the gate.

I fumbled in the dark and find it

wife sits up, afraid. My neighbor’s voice:

“I have bad news”. Beni is dead

and in the road. They’d found him

driving home. “Oh no” I said

my wife, leapt up, twisting her hands, imploring

“Tell me. What? Tell me” as if breath

was sucked from her body by the moon.

“It’s Beni. He’s dead” I said. She fell

so hard her body struck a hollow note

on the agate floor. “Ohno ohno ohno” she moaned

rolling as if snuffing out flames.

Illuminated by her grief I was blocked from approaching

by its blaze.

Climbing the stairs to the road

she floats before me like a ghost

The neighbors put Beni in a plastic sack,

one red smear where his head

should have been

My wife crouching

As if the bag had teeth

howling, the neighbors unsure, fade away

using the dark to hide.

Under her screams “No, no my Beni. No!” I wonder

“Was it them?” Courtesy or guilt that pressed my bell?

She cried that night and three days on

is crying still. In odd moments, face

morphing into putty, breath racked and edged as glass.

“He was my little man”, she repeats

and it was true.

Each morning cold from the wild

he entered her bed, tapped her nose

until she stirred and lifted her duvet.

He’d slide inside, u-turn and lay beside her

Both heads on the pillow

Sleeping for hours in each others arms.

She has no conflicted feelings for this man,

No resentments and unresolved debates.

The one I call “the dwarf in the cat suit.”

He loved me less, saved his best

for the mornings’ deep embrace.

The hole left by his passing has not been filled,

Lies between us like a fault.

I chip a grave in the stoney garden floor.

A small box with toys, a Guatemalan cloth

beside me on the moss. I could be

an Irish farmer or a pioneer.

A child has died. His silver leopard-spotted fur

has staked its claim in her red meet

and flexed in death cannot open to set her free.

I am patting my wife’s heart

into the dirt

as she weeps for the children

denied to her by fate.