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Red Cedar Review 40 (2005) 47-48


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Inkling

Kristin Camitta Zimet

You're no lap-lounger, limp
upon the sofa's plush, no dumpling-rump,
sun-stuporous, cream-scrounging puss,
whose deep, obliging nap
my fingers drag in idle parallels—
but splat, splayed on the screen,
cicada-hooked; your bunched-up belly-fur
bristles with Spanish needles.
You squirrel flat along a locust limb
to rake my scalp. Thorn-foot, you thump
snow-sodden on my pillow,
wedge wet nostrils into mine,
and milk my chest with icicles.
A paroxysmal push and purr
hurry my hand; a nip and hiss
freeze it. With one quicksilver lick,
old splinter-tongue, you twist away,
all blot and blotch in moon-dark.
You win: I give up pouncing,
cajoling, twitching my tail
at sealed-up holes,
seeking to press you quiet
as a mauled rabbit in a bedroom slipper.
But my heart cracks a window,
jumps into wind-sway, moon-skid,
bearberry bramble; it feels you turn
inside your skin, hunting down trust
into the open house. Come carry back [End Page 47]
a melting chill, an ears-back burrowing,
a scratched sign, an inkling how to love
the ones who can't come in.
Night upon night swallows them:
the sniper, the feral child.
Kristin Camitta Zimet is the Editor of The Sow's Ear Poetry Review. Her first full-length collection of poems, Take in My Arms the Dark, was published in 1999. Her poems have been in a wide range of magazines including Lullwater Review, Runes, and Centennial Review, and in anthologies, readings, and concerts. Her newest book-length poetry manuscript is based on the moves of the martial art, Taijiquan. Kristin co-founded the Appalachian Center for Poets and Writers and the Coalition for Jobs and the Environment. She works as a nature guide in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.


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