Tag: cat

Stray Steps by Brittany Capozzi

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Stray Steps

I want to climb our front steps,
Sit and lean my right arm on the iron railing.
Lean back into that day
When Dad was to my left—
The other support to lean on.

Less than an hour before taking in the view of the street
My forehead and hands lowered a few inches onto my thirteen-year-old cat,
As the push of a needle pulled his last breath.
I had never bowed to a death under my palms before.
I had never bowed to cancer,

But it crossed my path that day.

I’m sorry kiddo, that’s tough, his eyes on the street.
The pavement turned pink with hats and shirts
As hundreds of breast cancer patients, survivors, and caretakers
Moved through their annual fundraising walk.
I imagined a temporary finish line hanging somewhere.
Their future steps stray steps—
Would they find leaning, healing, or a bow?

We waved to as many strangers as we could.

Years later, I park in a deserted parking lot.
I can’t climb our front steps,
Sit and lean my right arm on that iron railing.
Lean back into that day
When Dad was to my left—
It’s not ours to climb.
And Dad’s not here.
I bowed
To him, too.

Instead, I lean my right arm on the center console.
The pressure pushes against my breast through the sweatshirt
And with left palm, I cup the side of my ribcage and move my hand around.
I can feel the lump after all.

My future now filled with stray steps for the next 26 days.
Walking with the same Worry DNA as those in the fundraiser.

On day 27, I’ll learn it’s a cyst.
Instead of bowing, I’ll lean back
Inhale the last molecules of fear through my nose
And exhale gratitude, feeling its air above lips.

For a split second, I’ll swear I climbed our front steps.

*

Brittany Capozzi is a yoga therapist (C-IAYT), writer, belly dancer, and the creator of Trust Fall Writing® based in Massachusetts. She received her Bachelor’s Degree in English from Curry College. While there, she completed and presented her undergraduate thesis “Therapeutic Writing: A Remedy for Understanding and Transforming Life Experiences” under advisor Dr. Allan G. Hunter, author of Therapeutic Uses of Writing.

Most recently, Brittany has written wellness articles for Belly Dance New England. Her “Coin for Thought” writing series, based on her YouTube series of the same name, is forthcoming in Fanoos Magazine.

She works with women who want to rediscover their uninterrupted selves through a sensory-based yoga therapy program by using handwriting and coin scarves as tools to cultivate a sense of confidence, safety, and wholeness without self-judgment. To say hello or learn about an initial complimentary yoga therapy session, visit her at understoryyogatherapy.com.

Like Schrödinger’s Cat by Betsy Mars

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Like Schrödinger’s Cat

he both was and wasn’t
dead, when we walked by,
children in tow, and he curled up,
blocked the sidewalk, either passed out

drunk from too much the night
before, or maybe just gone,
slipped away in plain sight,
while the tourists, all of us,

came and went, looked away,
intent on beignets and chicory coffee,
powdered sugar mounded on our plates.
He was still on the ground

when we returned from the Café du Monde,
vampires gone to bed, saxophones resting
in their velvet cases. He lay undisturbed
in the same position, not dead we thought,

though we didn’t check for breath,
but a composition, a still life, or not.
We skirted him, discussed the day to come,
decided he’d had too much,

shook our heads, walked on
to catch the trolley, preferred to think
he was still in the box, on this side
of life, for the children’s sake

we kept our pace, we didn’t slow,
just another man we‘d never know.

*

Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, photographer, and assistant editor at Gyroscope Review. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals and anthologies. Recent poems can be found in Minyan, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Sheila-Na-Gig, and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. Her photos have appeared online and in print, including one which served as the Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge prompt in 2019. She has two books, Alinea, and her most recent, co-written with Alan Walowitz, In the Muddle of the Night. In addition, she also frequently collaborates with San Diego artist Judith Christensen, most recently on an installation entitled “Mapping Our Future Selves.”

Somewhere Out There by Deron Eckert

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Somewhere Out There

My little cat,
how long
has it been
since you fled,
run off by
the swift swipe
of an old broom,
never to be seen
again?
Twenty-five,
thirty years?
Was your time
in this world
cruel?
Is it still?
Do you scrounge
for food left out
to the strays,
like you,
or did you
find comfort
in a welcoming
home,
one without swipes,
where the only
gesture your way
is a pat on the lap
you love,
asking you to come,
praying
you never leave?
Please know
I prayed, too.

*

Deron Eckert is a writer and poet who lives in Lexington, Kentucky. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, Door is a Jar, Ghost City Review, Maudlin House, The Fourth River, Flash Fiction Magazine, and elsewhere. He was a flash fiction finalist in New Millennium Writing’s 54th Writing Awards. He is currently seeking publication for his Southern Gothic, coming-of-age novel and his first collection of poetry. He can be found on Instagram at deroneckert and Twitter @DeronEckert.

Two Poems by Betsy Mars

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Hope is Also a Flower

I find it in the grove, yellow
flicker at the edge of my dark
perception. What matters
is the aperture, a tiny crack
in my cataract-clouded vision.

My filter captures dross, sapped
ground, equally traps gold, a slight
twist or refinement of the lens
then: mist rising,
a calla lily blooms again.

*

Deconstructing a Cat

A pile of paws: see how the nails retract,
out of the way for daily life,
the way they extend in fight or hunt,
thumb hooked – better to grab on.
The slinky spine, sharp shoulders high
and narrow to slice through grass,
deliver a sparrow. Haunches
muscular under such fine fur.

Eyes like glass: pupils slit in daylight,
full moons at night.

A tail built for balance,
whiskers flick at boundaries.
Nose a dainty triangle, nostrils twitch
at scent. Wrapped around my head
you chirp, clutch my heart with your kneading,
a tiny tiger in my ear softly breathing.

*

Betsy Mars practices poetry, photography, pet maintenance, and publishes an occasional anthology through Kingly Street Press which she founded in 2019. In 2020, her poem was selected as a winner in Alexandria Quarterly´s first line poetry contest series. Her poetry has recently appeared in Sky Island Journal, Sheila-Na-Gig, and Autumn Sky, as well as numerous anthologies and journals. She is a Best of the Net nominee and her photos have been featured in various journals. Betsy is the author of Alinea (Picture Show Press) and co-author of In the Muddle of the Night with Alan Walowitz (Arroyo Seco Press).

Offerings by J. David Hughes

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Offerings

Regularly I come home and at the worn altar
of the mat that says Welcome,
a puff of feathers,
a squirrel’s tail with a scattered foot or two.

Gestures of conciliation or appreciation?
Or each a separate, singular solicitation,
a logosyllabic language of blood and bone?

The halved chipmunk,
an orison for a different daily kibble.

The mouse’s head alone,
a prayer for more playtime.

The unmarked, unmoving robin,
a supplication for wings.

Coolly, he watches and cleans a paw
as I sweep the latest up in disgust.
And I wonder whether he wonders
if he is cursed with an illiterate deity,
or worse, a deity in denial
of what it is a god desires.

*

J. David Hughes lives, works, and writes in Oxford, MS.

Two Poems by Linda Lerner

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About Whales and Breathing

I’m thinking of whales
who sleep using only one side of
their brains, the other half stays awake
to make sure they’re still breathing;
thinking of how it used to be
before breathing had become routine
before it stopped, and someone
nudged me awake, how everything
I’d do, like making coffee in the morning
once was like breathing, I’d feel
every breath, could taste and see it,
I didn’t need someone else
to remind me, when breathing wasn’t
just pushing out one gray day
to let another in; I’m thinking

of people struggling to let out
each breath, tied up to ventilators
for months, not making it, and
thankful to be breathing at all;
I’m thinking of whales this Thanksgiving
how they breathe, and what
it takes to be alive every minute

*

Not Them Again

I wasn’t thinking of Eve
mythed from Adam’s rib when
I broke off the last part of my cat’s name,
Samsara, to create hers, six weeks
after he was gone on his 17th birthday,
a few days before my estranged brother also left…
did it to get Samsara back,
sister to a brother she never met
brings back my own brother
but this poem is not about him

Sara, would have none of it.
No lap sitting cat, would not let me
force her into his image, led only
by her instinctive nature
I watch her breathe new life
into this name, to own it absolutely

and see a long line of women
shadowing her, my own struggle against
a favored male sibling I resented…
that ongoing fight for women
to be who we are, a fight
for not against who we’re not

*

Linda Lerner is the author of 17 collections, including Takes Guts and Years Sometimes & Yes, the Ducks Were Real from NYQ Books (2011 & 2015) and When Death is a Red Balloon, her most recent collection (Lummox Press, 2019) Her poems have appeared in Maintenant, Paterson Literary Review, Gargoyle, Chiron Review, Free State Review, and Rat’s Ass Review among others.