The People’s Quill: Flower the Cat Comes to Poetry
Published 4:00 pm Saturday, June 30, 2012
By Betty Benner
She stretches out
on a sheaf of selected poems propped on my lap
It’s not that she’s taken with Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg her sleek blackness likes the feel of paper (coupled with my underlying promise)
No fussing here
Newsweek will do or the trib
Whatever I happen to be reading for now she becomes the poem
Cat are you jealous of my attention to the word
She rubs her head against Death of the Kapowsin Tavern yawns delicately at Letter to Kizer has no concern about blocking my view
Poetry matters I tell her
I move my knees
She leaps away, nails leaving puncture wounds in Church on Comiaken
Two black hairs remain for Richard Hugo praise or disdain she doesn’t say
To her in her constant search for comfort one word is as good as another
Logos widens her pupils as she watches the night from her stool by the window.