Blood on the Cat’s Neck and Other Poems

By Drew Pisarra

Blood on the Cat’s Neck

Originally published in Poydras Review

Coughing is the language of death
with its hacks, rasps and swallows
as distinctly out there
as the clickity tock of Xhosa
or the sonic singing of whales at sea.

Yet what is Death telling us
when it speaks so abruptly? 
Is it even speaking to us?
Or is it just interrupting
like a bored bystander
compelled to fill the dead space
with involuntary spew.

I’ve listened to 
and cringed at 
and even ignored 
plenty of coughs in my time.
And I’ll say this much: 

Death’s not talking 
about the warmth of the womb
or the furious friction of cock and cunt
or the time before that, 
before consciousness,
before the unconscious, 
before the before
if you can imagine such a thing.

Death’s forward-looking,
a pragmatist who thinks like a plant.
Be still, face the sun, rise, collapse.
Be done with it all. 
Ahem.

Water Drops on Burning Rocks

Originally published in Pine + Basil

I fall in love with clowns so easily.
I’ve never been able to figure out
why. Is it the big nose, the long feet, 
the frizzy red hair or that horn?  
A close friend of mine insists, 
I’m irrationally smitten with circuses. 
They try to talk me back to reality
with mentions of mistreated 
elephants, tigers that lash out and
monkeys forced to dance for peanuts
to calliope.  They argue against purely
physical genius and for the supremacy 
of mental gymnastics. I counter: 
There’s more than one way to spin 
a plate!  They’ll never unfreak the freak 
in me because I don’t know why exactly
but I do love clowns. I do. 

Room 666

Originally published in Red Fez

There’s a conversation that’s supposed to be happening
or that’s supposed to be started by someone else soon.
I guess I stopped believing that I could initiate it
even as I admit there was a time when I thought
that I was in the middle of it, that I could be the cause
of it, that it was happening continually
all around me, and not solely with me but among 
everyone everywhere at different points of the day.
Now all that’s stopped. For now.

I feel sure it’s still possible, this conversation.
I’ve heard the suggestion of the beginning of it,
side commentary that feels like it could grow into it,
and brief exchanges that confirm its inevitability. 
I’ve even had facsimiles of what I’m waiting for
play intermittently in my head.
What’s missing is this extended thought communicated
as chatter continues. Or instead of chatter continuing.
Well, that too petered out. Life went on pause.
The television of consciousness went on static.
Now all that’s left is glib talk about the weather,
chummy complaints about money, pat reports of the job,
and pompous grandstanding about the future of cinema.

To say I prefer the sound of a plane flying overhead,
or the whoosh of a car heading down the street,
or the tick of a clock that isn’t in this room,
because I don’t own a clock that ticks,
isn’t to say that I’ve nothing to say to you,
or that you’ve nothing to say to me.

It’s just that I need you to say something with meaning.
This time, for once, tell me something I haven’t heard,
the truth or as close as you can come to it,
or what you really think, raw and unguarded,
where you risk looking ridiculous because
you’ve never even tried to express it before.
Maybe that, whatever it is, will mean something. 
Even this late in the game.

A literary grantee of Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation and Curious Elixirs: Curious Creators, Drew Pisarra is the author of You’re Pretty Gay (2021), a collection of short stories and Infinity Standing Up (2019), a collection of sonnets. A participating poet in The Whitney Biennial 2022, he has had his poetry published in publications as varied as Analog sci-fi magazine and the Food & Wine website.