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.