After Her Ex Takes His Own Life, She
Adopts His Cat
As penance, at first, for the
self-flagellants
of catnip-happy scratches pacifying
blame
over breaking up the night prior to
his suicide—
though, as the cat “purr-furs” her
ex’s left side
of bed (after rubbing his back against
that same
cracked, bathroom trim following a
light snack),
she’s rendered cat-atonic in imagining
the ex-lover, perhaps, in-habiting
this black
feline. Now, holding the tom to her
chest
in weeping apologies for her awful timing
so close
to his mom’s passing, the cat becomes
a cat-alyst
for release from her self-imposed
purgatory
as nothing but perfect purring is
returned to her
avowed unworthiness….And when her love
life reveals
the same nine lives and that prostrate
monastic cat
rubs her new beau’s boots the first
time they meet,
there’s nothing mad about this lapsed
cat-tholic
waking at dawn to overflow dish with
wet food
before another day of this catalytic
converter of cat
silencing her wounded heart’s
unmuffled rumblings
so she doesn’t become that crazy, old
cat lady
but, rather, forever owns one black
magic cat
who miraculously knows when to leap
onto her lap
to catheter away the heartache’s
growing acids
with the swale of tail or head-rub to
face before
his return to the window’s feeder of
birds morphs the tabby
into this lovely black Cadillac
hearsing away so much hurt
Or entombing it inside a cat soul’s
sacred catacomb.
For the Bread Baker and His Conjoined Twins
And so each inchoate loaf is now a foetus
And the rare, errantly, over-heated
yeast
That tarnished sperm of his which led
To three shared legs and two arms--
So, kneading, he laments the
ingredients
Of that misspent youth’s meth and
booze
As his sadness rises a second time
when
Peering inside the stone oven to spy
two
Ovaries of loaves conjoining at doughy
torsos
And fated to be passed over even
though
Their price will be “two for one”
after noon.
But it’s these “remainder loaves” he
takes home
And slices for the boys’ favourite
French toast.
And when they weep over the cruel
nicknames
that stick inside them like raisons in
wheat,
he tenderly rubs their heads and hopes
his love
is like the brush of buttered egg-wash
run over
the rye’s crust to keep it from
splitting open….
And knowing, now, how each muscled
kneading
Releases trepidation in the separation
operation
possibly taking both lives, I begin
each day
with one of his loaf’s toast to taste
the molasses
of his sadness when they refuse to
rise
for school and all he can do is cover
them
in hugs for another fifteen or so
minutes
And think of the sourdough‘s slow,
third rising.
Still who’d have thought this would
lead me
To feed, daily, on their Go Fund Me
campaign
For the home nurse—or to pray they
find love like the conjoined Chang
brothers
Who spent three days each week in the
other’s marriage bed—or to both curse
and bless
whatever baker of human souls did
knead me
in such a way that, contemplating
separating
myself from their story’s longing and
pain,
I feel my heart’s marbled rye, too,
might die…
For The Black Bear Biologist Tagging Hibernating Bears
The drugging then
Tunnelling into den is
Mostly routine until her
Found birthmother
Refuses to meet
With her given-up girl--
So, weighing cubs
And drawing blood,
Wells-up all the grief still
Hibernating inside
The den of her repression
As their cries and clawing
Of down gloves trigger
Her unconscious trauma
In being pulled from
A like lush breast
On February 7 of 83….
Still measuring
all
Those little claws and teeth
While the
bear-rug
Of drugged sow battles
To keep eyes
fixated
On her squealing twins,
Opens the hand of hope
For her own Mom, maybe,
To struggle for sobriety
The next time she’s lugged
From her like below-
Street-watering hole.
For now though all
The biologist can do
To keep her heart’s eagle
Aloft in the mountain
Breeze of these
feelings
Is volunteer to descend,
A second time
Into the musky den
To return these two
Shivering cubs to
The mother who was
Slowly bulldozed
Back into the hole;
And, over time, she’ll
Find succour in mastering
The exact seconds left
In mother-bear
paralysis
So she can linger
Against the warm breast
And feel some wholeness
Restored when her heart-
Beat entrains with the
Sow’s slow, strong
sonar.
Imagine her, now, slowly
Healing in touching
teat
And drooling teeth without
The three-hundred-pound sow
Roaring; and consider
Her crazy rebirthing
ritual
In embracing the radio-
Collared neck and
giving
The snout a good-bye
Peck before breaching
From each winter den
And feeling like a spring cub
Emerging for the first time
To wonder at the
wild-
Flower laced breeze and
Unhindered sun, which
suddenly
And completely soaking
Her black coat, feels
like
The mother’s mid-winter tongue
Warmly passing over her blind newborn.
Upon Learning her Husband only has a few Months to Live
She recalls gold finch and robin
Flying off with his
coiled, grey locks
After she cuts his hair outdoors
So, that
last spring, she shears
His hair closer to the tree line
Then tosses the
manes, like bread
Crumbs, to swooning moms-to-be.
Soon she
envisions the looming
ravens of grief quietly nesting
in some solace
as, widowed
her first Christmas, she’ll task
her grandson to
scale
a naked deciduous tree to retrieve
a
soft vessel of a nest
Which, set on bed stand, keeps
Memories of him more alive
Than any ash-filled urn atop mantle.
And the
more she imagines those
Salt and pepper tresses espied
(Between hay
and twigs bedside),
The more follicles of solace grow
And
curl with visions of grief
kept at bay. Now, they read
about
nests before bed
And, together, nurse on succour
In learning how
generations of birds
Recycle the moss, floss, and deer
Hair. See, then, how it ends with him
More easily letting
go of his soul-
Mate as they marvel at his hair’s
Heat-holding properties lowering
goldfinch mortality so
offspring
always bloom at her feeder.
Who’d have thought they could
nest so
warmly with death
When considering the future robins’
Fallen wing feathers delivering
A recycled piece
of him
To brush against her lonesome cheek?
Who’d have guessed
all these soft, gathered thoughts
woven in their last words
together
would soothe those death-restless
heads
even more than the
pillows’
dependable, down, breast feathers?
Dennis
Camire is a writing instructor at Central Maine Community College. His poems
have appeared in Poetry East, Spoon River Review, The Mid-American Review and
other journals and anthologies. An Intro Journal Award Winner and Pushcart
Prize nominee, his most recent book is Combed by Crows, Deerbrook Editions. Of
the collection. X. J. Kennedy says: "Dennis Camire is an up and comer… The
poems engage us with their promising titles, and deliver with skill and
energy." Of Franco-American origin, he lives in an A-frame in West Paris,
Maine.
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