Instead of writing a blog introducing my new novel, Ben Armstrong’s Strange Trip Home, I’ve decided to use this space for some poems. Here are a couple in the form of notes to a friend, the poet Joanna Klink, whom I was hoping to amuse. She claims she was. She’s a kind person.
Dear Joanna,
I stopped by your office this afternoon but you weren’t there.
I was disappointed, as I have the start of a poem that I wanted to run by you.
The start was this:
A dog.
I think it’s a pretty good start but I admit, I’m stumped.
I’ve been stuck on it for a long time.
Sometimes I think it should be:
A cat.
No, I think, A dog is better, maybe.
But what should the next word be?
It seems really really important.
Or could be.
–David
And this, a few weeks later….
Dear Joanna,
To follow up
regarding my poem:
I think a dog
is better
or at least mine
is happier
to see me than my cat
would be
if I had a cat
which I don’t.
But here’s the rub
or scratch, really:
One time
(when I was a boy
and my cat was in my bed)
in bright moonlight,
I could see her tiny
nostrils flare and waves
move down her fur body
until she dug
her claws into my bare leg
and squeezed out the first
of four kittens
before the sun came up.
A kitten factory,
Grandma said,
when she woke us
a few hours later,
Put mice in one end,
kittens come out the other.
–David