MRS. OSBORNE\u2019S CATS<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Even her porch was lined with boxes,
\nand cats, rheumy-eyed or clear, lay on shelves
\nabove the washer and dryer, on cupboards and chairs,
\nor scratched in plastic dishpans filled with sand
\nspread like pots to catch a leak.<\/p>\n
Her dentures didn\u2019t fit, red lipstick
\nwobbled over wrinkled lips, a thin grime at her temples,
\nbut her sheets were laundered every week.
\nWhen she invited me in, the laundryman,
\nshe sat in a rocker and wrote a check
\nin a slow tottery script, stopping to tell little stories.
\nI watched the pen pause, hair float in window light.<\/p>\n
Her cats were small-town legendary.
\nAnd though she had over fifty,
\npeople kept dropping off more.
\nThey walked away without ever going inside
\nwhere crusty saucers spotted the floors,
\ncats ate from the frying pan and dishes on the stove,
\nand the smell like an animal larger than all the cats together
\nmoved everywhere at once on brown toes.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t know the inside of her life\u2014
\nwhat love had done, the paths ridicule
\nmade through whatever garden she was prone
\nto dream of, the pathos that seemed an answer,
\nthat nugget of loathing required to love this much
\nthe things others abandoned.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Joseph Powell<\/a> has published five collections of poetry.\u00a0 The first book, Counting the Change<\/em>, won the Quarterly Review of Literature\u2019s Book Award in 1986.\u00a0 The most recent books, Hard Earth <\/em>(2010)<\/a> and Preamble to the Afterlife <\/em>(2013)<\/a>,\u00a0 were published by March Street.\u00a0 His book of short stories called Fish Grooming & Other Stories<\/em><\/a>\u00a0 was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award, 2008.\u00a0 He has also co-written a book on poetic meter called Accent on Meter <\/em><\/a>published by the NCTE in 2004. For his poetry Joseph Powell has won a National Endowment for the Arts Award (2009)<\/a>, an Artist Trust award<\/a> (2005), and the Tom Pier Award (2006). He has been Central Washington University\u2019s Phi Beta Kappa Scholar of the Year (2004), and was awarded Distinguished University Professor in Artistic Accomplishment (2009). He has taught in the English department at Central Washington University for the last twenty-nine years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" MRS. OSBORNE\u2019S CATS Even her porch was lined with boxes, and cats, rheumy-eyed or clear, lay on shelves above the washer and dryer, on cupboards and chairs, or scratched in plastic dishpans filled with sand spread like pots to … Continue reading