eviscerating the polis, one end of an orange cat

even the city has surprises in its veins

it's not just me

ape the ape?  cat the cat.

 

so how do we get to our own inner workings?  how access the underground?  tug around with your own plumbing?  (sublime, kids, you can give your arms a rest.)  how get to our inner Virgil, hard hat on and smiling?  follow the lead of the match before you get a rational bead on your reason.  orange cat, orange cat.  so here is "One End of an Orange Cat."  From my  Funny : 

One End of an Orange Cat

Given the variables it’s odd

that things narrow down one way

or another, but they do.

Reminds me of the man

who had to knock on a door and tell

a woman he’d just run over her cat.

That’s awful, said the woman,

stepping out, as if to see it happen.

The man repeated an apology, said, Please,

let me replace your cat.  Well, the woman

nodded, How are you at catching mice?

            The possible variations

seem excessive for the task at hand.  Not only

for the story of your life, but also

for the universe as we have it, rather

than the myriad other possible universes. 

In both cases, finally, the way

that it is, is

the only way that it is.  Infinite potential

options; one single one.  Excessive

for the task at hand.

Of course, he moved right in.  That’s

the violence of origins; the generative

splat of disaster.  He fixes the roof,

hauls her ashes, but cannot find

much in the way of mice.  Wonders,

sometimes, Why was this her

one condition? 

Life can’t possibly have the time

to hand-pick all these minute exchanges

so it must be narrative and need,

even narrative need, that creates

them, fills in the gaps, replaces

our murdered cats.  A baseball game

or a day at the desk?   Minute exchanges.

The answering of any question

is an attrition of possibilities.

A replacement, a companion.

Sometimes he sussed the cat itself had been,

at one time, a sorry substitution

for a rotten love, now over

and listing towards forgotten. 

The story now becomes a comment

on her capacity for abstraction. 

The lost love had burnt umber

hair, worked down by the docks.  The cat

shows up one day in the woman’s worst

despair and who wants a cat?  But then, she

sees his roughish orange hair; smells

fish breath and there you have it: romance.

By the time the cat is flat,

she’d loved it for its own array

of anecdote: the day it caught a mouse,

its extra toes, its appetite, its thick cat

hair on her goddamn clothes.

The central tenant, companionship,

eludes her.  In this, she is not unusual.  When

looking for lovers we often search for elements

of what we’ve grown used to.  Ach

du.

The man deliberates upon his actions.

Apparently, I killed this woman’s cat.

It looked and smelled like orange ruffi

and I done crushed it flat. 

Now she loves me.  I deserve that? 

Yet she loves me, or says she does.  It

would be nice if she could.

I will be vigilant

against the hated mice.

This life is mine.

Man knocks on a woman’s door, one

afternoon in late September.  Air smells of wet

leaves and weather.  Woman nods, steps out,

firming a clutch on her sweater.

Each glances over and their eyelids

widen as if a wind had come upon

two butterflies and breathed their four

wings open to new notions. 

Minute exchanges.

Well I hope you like the pictures and the poem.  Did it work?  Well, I suppose before I saw the yellow street cat I was already thinking about this poem, though I didn't have its title in my head, just the refrain "A baseball game or a day at the desk/ minute exchanges."  So I guess I'll tell you about that, which is that I kind of work too much and have done so for a long time.  It is a problem.  The day I wrote this I chose a day at the desk, everyone else went to the game.  Now I think I am going to join the small troupe that is off to pick up my son from pre-k, because though I'd like to stay and think about this with typing, I probably will have a lot of fun if I go.  Our dearling friends and kid are staying here for a visit, so we'll all go.  I'll walk around.  Sunny day.  Cold though.  Everyone, up from your desks!

love,

Jennifer

Comments

[david kaltenbach]

thank you for that poem.

[Mary]

Lovely.

[Stacey]

Yes! It works! And I love a man in a hard hat and camouflage.

[Jennifer Michael Hecht]

Thanks so much everyone. Comments make me happy. It's like a drug.