Monday, April 5, 2010

Not for the squeamish

Today's prompt from Robert Lee Brewer was to write a "TMI poem." I tried to think of something that I was willing to write about--and post publicly!--that might include material that would cause someone to chide "TMI!"

I am not a devotee of scatological humor, in general. Nevertheless, my rescue cat's tragically inbred digestive system rather fascinates me. Her stinks are so bad that we nearly gave her back to the rescue agency from which we adopted her. (She was part of what was, at the time, the largest animal rescue in Maryland--over 300 animals, many too sick to save.) I am lucky that, unlike my husband, I have a relatively poor sense of smell.

So here we go. I'm rather embarrassed to have written this....

Neko, Maryland’s Most Flatulent Cat

Like a fuzzy, olfactory Basquiat she paints the walls
with stenches organic and chemical: vinegar, diesel,
dung, death. Artistic remove is her aim: take in the work
and stagger back, wonder at the creator even as you flee,
hand to mouth. She was raised in chicken wire
among hundreds of neglected cats; puny when rescued,
she immediately expelled a stillborn litter no one knew
she carried. If this Guernica of stink is her protection,
it fails: when cuddled, knuckle-petted, ear-rubbed,
she soaks you with sulfur, and when you stop your caresses,
a candy-pink-toed paw, claws lazily in transit,
reaches to smack you gently, to demand you get over it
and love her again.

1 comment:

Kristi Jacobson said...

that one definitely registered on my desk-shaking seismograph. I now want to meet her, yet I don't; first I would need to determine how sensitive your sense of smell is not.