Tabby Ode
By Rebecca L. Morrison

It was said that The Prophet
took shears to the sleeve
of his robe so as not to
disturb the cat that napped
there, and I would invoke

new galaxies to keep you
nestled, soft and swelling
against the arc of my back
as I tremble, ill with the way
our words shocked and
stressed the air between us,

and at once I am afraid that
I found in a cat what I wanted
to find in a man, afraid
that we've only got a single
chance.

Treason
By Rebecca L. Morrison

In the shower I slipped,
and the nail belonging to my
left foot's big toe bent
all the way back to reveal
rare, strange flesh, virgin
like the fresh peach pulp that
hung from my high school lips
when Ben, teenage god,
swim team captain, took me
on wooded picnics to touch
what was growing fresh and fast
beneath my blouse. The third July he
left, and I cried like Catherine when
Henry penned Greensleeves for that
eleven-fingered, google-eyed
harlot called Anne, but her name
was Caitlin, and on my eighteenth
birthday I drank too much Chambord
at a rock concert, and told her I wished
she were dead. Sometimes I still see
the harlot home-wrecker on my college
campus, and I look her in the eyes
and greet her by name like a band-aid
on sweating skin. Post-slip, I bought
a bathmat; it clung to the floor
of my tub for six months but
its pearlescent surface grew
soil-stained from my soles
and their summer barefoot filth,
and when I ripped it up from its
porcelain bed, my cat jumped
at the staccato pops of lost
suction, and I cringed at the
clammy grout I'd allowed
to fester beneath its clear, plastic cups --

Lunch Poem #2

By Rebecca L. Morrison

The first time I wrote about lunch I talked

about the same stir-fry every time, and today

is just another stir-fry, and last night

was just another stir-fry, which I ate on my

frameless mattress, waiting for you to open

the door so I could ignore you until you

wandered to find me, which you didn't,

and after five minutes of your kitchen grocery

rustling, I wandered to find you, and you asked

me why I'd waited so long to tell you I was

there in our space. Now I munch my stir-fry, and

the folks traipsing in from outdoors are all wet,

and I call you to ask if there's rain where you are,

and you tell me you're dry and you'll be home late,

and that this weekend we will go to the state fair.

Accounting for the Humanities Major
By Rebecca L. Morrison
11:48 on a Friday and I am running
late for my accounting exam: little
twenty-question fucker – accruals,
liabilities, deferrals, equities – words
that make my stomach cramp with the
aptitude I've never had, and oh man I am
rushing so hard I forget my hunger, so I
run sweaty into that good exam, but I am
late thus wobbly-chaired. There are
twenty questions but most answers are
just guesses; I was never good at
foreign languages - aha! And shortly
this gnawing desperation is awake
in my stomach, and I think of the
vegetable stir-fry I'll have for lunch,
which is the same thing I had Thursday
and Wednesday too. I remember the
time I tried to cook rice in my parents'
kitchen, and molten plastic scalded

my foot which had my skin bubbling.
I was limping for days, and my father
told me the pain was punishment,
karma for being a careless ninny
who can't record a balance sheet
or even goddamn cook a pot
of rice. I got a C on that good exam,
which to be honest, dad, is two letters
better than I had expected or perhaps
even deserved.

Muriel

By Rebecca L. Morrison

She loved to write letters, and I wish

I'd written her more of them like she

always asked, brightly, slipping

a sheet of postage stamps across

the counter, maybe hoping I was

scared of her lonesomeness - widowed

lovelessness - and the time she fell

down the stairs to her basement.

For hours she survived with screams,

until Jesse, the Boy Scout next door,

heard her, and he got a certificate from

the Baltimore city police enumerating

his courage. Now I cringe at those hours

she spent shattered on concrete, those

hours I spent trying to crochet with

the hook she gave me, only to assume

she could just teach me again later.

And when the day came, prefaced by

the ninety-year slip from here to not

at all there, I stood weeping, dripping

with my mother's good emeralds and

diamonds, and the soggy grass clippings

and leaves that caked my black pumps,

and tried to read aloud her favorite poem --

"I am the only little black lamb -

The only one, that's what I am;

All of the rest have little white faces

I guess I'm a whole family tree of disgraces," --

until my father's grip on my shoulder

began to shake and sent me, scared

and slow like a letter tumbling

down the basement stairs.

Head Cold

By Rebecca L. Morrison

My throat is tender, stripped,

so for sleep I steal a pinch of

stale pot from your mason jar.

I slump, fade against my naked

pillow; I lug thousand-ton eyelids,

heavier without my heart's

once-new thousand-ton thump

when it would press firm against

your pocked boyfriend-chest. I didn't

notice the NyQuil you'd placed on my

nightstand, the bottled water, until

morning rays met crusted lids, and you

called on your lunch break just to say hi,

just to remind me "a night is nothing

compared to forever," so I wondered,

Ryan, why you'd slept on my cat-fur

floor, just to avoid my germed breath,

heavy against your face, for I'm certain

there are more viruses in our future.

Lunar Eclipse of July 14, 2011

By Rebecca L. Morrison

Boot-clouds of lava

dust awake, Neil

Armstrong once reported

no Gabriel, no Michael;

no messenger, no fighter --

only magnificent

desolation. Days after

your father drove to

the family lake house

and disturbed the shore's

sand with a bullet

that travelled temple

to temple, I tried to

disturb the new hush

of our desolation,

twice straight to answering

machine, and slowly I struggled

to remember the color of

your eyes. Nineteen, old friend,

we once were drunken moon-

dwellers, but now I only

dream of a dip with you

in uncharted lunar seas,

water rippling in the wake

of our boot-clouds --

but there's no

moon-water to sate my still,

arid tongue, to remind me that

they're brown or blue, only

ice where I hoped to find it.