Feral Cats

Father at 3 in the afternoon,
drunk asleep
in the hungry hold
of an old sofa.
No more than five,
Billy is outside
staring down feral cats.
Their eyes yellow
in the broad shadowy leaves.

They speak to him;

fill his belly with words
about hunting, and trust
what is known.
By claws and teeth
Billy knows

he will survive.

And the cats say,
"We will survive"
and Billy smiles
a coyote smile.



---

Mapmaking
for CJ

I touch a place on the small
of your smooth back;
a lightening strike.

I make a note:
four fingersteps
to the west of your spine;

and another vista
an index finger from
the mole on your shoulder.

This one place here,
just a palm beyond your ear,
makes a wonderful sigh.

On the smooth plain
of your slender wrist
following the blue rivers

of a life,
I make a special mark
no map key can describe.

( previously published in Nerve Cowboy )



---

photo courtesy CJ Sage

• Editor-in-Chief,
Disquieting Muses
• Host of FM91.5, KKUP's
"Out of Our Minds"

     Dancing Bear lives in the San Francisco bay area. His poems, art interviews, reviews and photographs have been published in many journals, including New York Quarterly, Zuzu's Petals Quarterly, Slipstream, Rio Grande Review, Pearl, Poetry Motel and Nerve Cowboy. He is Editor-In-Chief of the on-line magazine Disquieting Muses (disquietingmuses.com) and the 1999 winner of the Mindfire Chapbook Contest for his manuscript Blue Hand, later this year a chapbook Atlas(Red Fruit Press) will be released. Dancing Bear is the host of a weekly poetry show "Out of Our Minds" for public supported KKUP 91.5 FM in Cupertino, CA.

Mitakuye oyasin (All my relations),
Dancing Bear