Have you ever, my mother asks me,
seen a cat on acid?
I have, she says, and I'll never forget
that it ran across the lawn like a black
stripe on green,
and climbed up a tree backwards, the freak.
And all the time, it howled the most terrible howl,
so its panther cousins in the
wild jungles lifted their heads
and rent their feline cool with the worried cry--
a sound that launched a hundred million
blackbirds from their perches on the telephone wires
hundreds of miles away.
I've only heard a sound like that once more,
she says:
when I was in the hospital and you were
coming out of me, you screamed, she says--
I'd never been more terrified. And she looks
out onto our lawn, which is short and very green;
the sprinklers make pararbolas of white-light
into rainbow.
on second thought, she says, I might've been
the one who screamed.
'08
