by David Greenspan
A day without light and you
no more sun than the leaves
jaundiced and crisp
beneath your paws in a greenhouse.
Hush now, dearest of fur,
half hearted and cobwebbed.
What of the spade, the shovel
weeping marrow colored dirt?
You see shredded cardboard,
handfuls of rust. What else
might you want? A warm glass of mouse,
burlap wrapped over your flowered nose?
Brush us with your nocturnal habit,
teach us to speak your language,
novenas hissed at what lives
under the bald planter.
Come here, little calico one, watch us
milk ourselves stupid with crushed poppy,
dissolve as the clouded glass above
cries oh you ignorant, waning animal.
Watch our eyes flick and scatter
beneath lids themselves
beneath an ever clotting moon.
David Greenspan is the author of One Person Holds So Much Silence, forthcoming from Driftwood Press. He’s a PhD candidate in Poetry at the University of Southern Mississippi and earned an MFA from UMass Amherst. His poems have appeared, or will soon, in places like Bellevue Literary Review, Crab Creek Review, DIAGRAM, Prelude, Sleepingfish, and others.
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