(The Cat Eats)
by Dale Smith

THE CAT EATS in the kitchen under a small table. Hoa taps softly on a Mac keyboard. Outside the full moon promises much luck but produces little by way of net gain. I drank beer and whisky with friends tonight. Then K and I dried clothes at the laundry-o-mat. Many people crowded the place. The air was heavy with humidity and detergent. Keaton played with a penny. He flipped it and laughed, it falling many times to the floor. I practiced invisibility. No words for anyone. Instead I withdrew into a stony cavern of silence except for what attention I could spare my son. Car lights zoomed in the windows, leaving bright traces on silver droplets beading the glass. I have a secret list of heroes. I don’t live in a heroic age. It’s an era of crippled minds and ass-kissers. My heroes are fascists and degenerates, wicked debauched creatures who inhabit the darkest bordello of my mind. Go out in April wind, cool air in jasmine and the chimes ringing in a bank of star jasmine. Go inside and there find the black stone too. Beat black bruises on pulsing blossoms, a spoon-full of piss poured in a pint of blond beer. Visit a vomitorium for a week’s respite. Barf larvae into leaf-etched goblets then hang and gibbet up a candied corpse. Flies buzz in its cheeks, gasses explode. You know you want a bite. Take one with me. Let’s just do it for once. Get it over with. Gorge and puke it all out and feel great about it.

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