Cat On Acid

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