STUNT CAT

Elegant Choice and I sat in a hammock just now and alternated lines on a poem called "Stunt Cat." It is a poem about a cat on drugs.

Stunt Cat

Bends his head to his Whiskas, bends his head
to his Fancy Feast, bends his head to a crystal
goblet and takes his first taste of fine liver,
and another taste behind it, Drug--now he tastes
Lift a Paw for the Cameras, and he tastes Run-
ning Jump on a Horse. And now he must leap
on the limb of a tree, and now he is held
in the mouth of a dog, and now he must let
a child ride him, but in his mind he sinks deep
in silk couches, and in his mind are clouds
..............of smoke---he was once in a movie
called Lure of the Poppy. In his mind he is
........................................riding the dragon,
though no one has invented that phrase yet,
in his mind he is chomping the head of a koi
from the fat hand of an extra, and no one
has ended his scene yet, and no one says
............................Cut or calls out Treat,
for the time being the film is rolling still,
the film is rippling like his fur in the wind
as Stunt Cat runs in a circle, he is shining black,
he is film himself, a roll and a roll of rolling
film, and he is recording everything, all
his smallest actions, all his hops through
hoops, right down to his only line, Mroww.
His voice is a smaller stunt cat, it leaps
out of him perfectly trained, he spent long
years teaching it timing, and how he dreamed
..............................................of letting it fly
like a motorcycle from the lip of the Grandest
Canyon, all other vocabulary beneath him,
MROWW, licking scraps of adrenaline
............................................from his beard,
the taste of Fine Liver at last surging through him.