NIGHT CAT, DAY CAT
All day the new adopted tabby
stalks the upstairs, howls
for human company. By night
he prowls the windowsill
to oversee our sleep.
At dawn I come downstairs,
turn on machines. The old
black cat purrs against my wrist
at the keyboard, curls
about my ankles, seeks my lap.
The day cat and the night cat
avoid each other, won’t share
space. The black cat’s eyes
glare yellow, the tabby stares
green at the moon’s hunting face.
We’re at the point of solstice.
From here on down, the dark
comes a little earlier. The day-
cat grows thinner, a shade
in my lap, my lingering hand.
FORBIDDEN
A single gauzy pink oleander
grows at the corner of the yard,
marking a 5-year-old’s boundaries.
It’s poison,” the mother says.
So sweet its scent – is she afraid
her only daughter might taste
a petal of that frilled and
fatal pink?
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Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog
handler in Somerset, California, USA. Her poems have
appeared in The Iowa Review, The New York Quarterly,
Poet Lore, Poetry International, Southern Humanities
Review, and elsewhere, and she’s included in the
anthology California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to
the Present (Santa Clara University, 2004). Her
newest book, The Downstairs Dance Floor (Texas
Review Press, 2006), is winner of the Robert
Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize.
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