Rob Dennis

Nine Lines for the Dead Cat on Bellevue Way
                              

Less than fifty feet from the apartment parking lot entrance, between the road and the overgrown drainage ditch, I saw you:
your russet-mottled frame and white underbelly, your legs outstretched in something like repose. The colonnade of oaks
went on dripping their Spanish mosses, and I couldn’t smell you—not with the windows down, not even after the eighth day—

though I imagined what monumental force of ants would be carrying you back to the quarry, piece by piece, slaves following
a pharaoh’s orders: SPHINX UNACCEPTABLE, MUST BE MOVED. And you still had your nose. I suppose there were maggots, too,
spelunking the dark caverns of your throat, hankering after some garbage-heap or windowsill existence. Yesterday, a woman

wrapped you in a plastic shopping bag, placed you in the back of her SUV, her face peaked and gray. And once it was obvious
you were not hers, I decided you might be mine, Cat, there to remind me just how lovely an end can be: a moment’s pause
sucking up the road-heat, when the lights grow brighter and the here kitty kitty kitty of the night wind whistles fondly in the grass.