Cat Poem

Earlier in this blog, I may have mentioned that I believed there were no really interesting or exciting cat poems out there. Well, I am happy to report that I am wrong. I am currently reading May Swenson's New & Selected Things Taking Place and came across this:

The Secret in the Cat


I took my cat apart
to see what made him purr.
Like an electric clock
or like the snore

of a warming kettle,
something fizzed and sizzled in him.
Was he a soft car,
the engine bubbling sound?

Was there a wire beneath his fur,
or humming throttle?
I undid his throat.
Within was no stir.

I opened up his chest
as though it were a door:
no whisk or rattle there.
I lifted off his skull:

no hiss or murmur.
I halved his little belly
but found no gear,
no cause for static.

So I replaced his lid,
laced up his little gut.
His heart into his vest I slid
and buttoned up his throat.

His tail rose to a rod
and beckoned to the air.
Some voltage made him vibrate
warmer than before.

Whiskers and a tail:
perhaps they caught
some radar code
emitted as a pip, a dot-and-dash

of woolen sound.
My cat a kind of tuning fork?--
amplifier?--telegraph?--
doing secret signal work?

His eyes elliptic tubes:
there's a message in his stare.
I stroke him
but cannot find the dial.

-May Swenson

What a wonderfully grotesque poem! The best part is that Swenson is not necessarily trying to be grotesque, she is merely interested in the "thingness" of the cat; she reports her findings in an objective way. I know Swenson has other cat poems and will let you know if any of them are as fabulous as this!
_______________________________________________________________

I may have found an extremely part-time writing gig, but I don't want to jinx it by listing it here yet, but as soon as it is 100%, I will let you all know.

I went to BOTH bookstores here in Bemidji to find a copy of Dante's Inferno. Neither of them had a copy - what the hell? You would think that a college town would have a copy of this book - does no one need to read this for a freshman lit class?

Peace,
Erin