| Cat
Head
by J. Kemble
--I slip into the bedroom unseen by my
wife looking for my best friend, and I find her
right where she was last night, under the bench
on a pizza box.
--I can’t fit,
so I stuff my head and shoulders under the bench,
resting my head inches away from her head. I can
hear light Mexican music resonating from the pizza
box, from the hive like apartment downstairs where
my neighbors are stacked. The box is a stiff,
cardboard pillow, and I can feel my friend sniffing
the dusty air, inhaling my pheromones. Her tongue
is rough, and feels like sandpaper wearing away
at my head, causing me to bald faster than genetics.
--Once I saw it up
close; it looked like sea urchins at the bottom
of the ocean, small micro-tentacles washing back
and forth in the tide. But, strangely, it feels
comforting, like Mother. My eyes are closed, and
I feel the familiar vertigo that now keeps me
from roller coasters and carnival rides pull me
over and over, uzumaki, sick and insane,
like premature death.
--But I don’t
want to miss T.V., so I ignore the sleepiness
and when she is done licking, I un-wedge myself
from under the bench in the bedroom and return
to the bright halogen lit living room.
--She follows and
lays behind me; her father/son, batting her tail,
while my wife watches a rerun that we saw together
in the theater and relinquishes the computer to
my lucid abstract descriptions.
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to Letter X |
