"Black Cat" by Brett Celinski
My hand is on my desk
Doing some paper thing
When she hits the corner of my eye
She’s like an owl, dressed in a fat, ink-black jacket
Her sharp accents of ears become horns in the shade
Sketched hairline right for the percolating throat
Intellect’s gaze of green
Set as ink smudges
The curve of my hand, before trying to turn the pages
Her neck twists into
Whiskers rubbing all corners
Her tail soft oil-smoke,
Spine crafted to bend
Against all edges,
Supine by my legside and the chairside
Why is this black animal here
Looking like it came in through the window
She will be here forever.
Then she will shoot off, spooked, up the stairways and the hallways
Her shadows of home become patterns of her presence
Papers slither off the desk,
She knocks the domestic stuff off
And then the ears perk back and notice
Something else
Nose is the smudge of the eraser
Sitting over the nib of fangs
The mouth peppering the papers and the wax plants
She cries a warbling bird sound.
Her whole shape wiggles like black electricity
I watched her fight off the dogs that ran in with snow-crusted paws
When she hissed everyone listened and I jolted
She becomes
Parts of the house, this banal creaking box
And back again
I follow her shadow movements, my random hand does,
Then feels more welcome
On returning to the paper
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