No Max it was not me who took your wheels! :-)I like that catchers P
-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Max Richards
Sent: 22 February 2011 22:40
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: snap: short black
Short Black
In the Sylvia Plath Café Bookshop
in London near Primrose Hill
I ordered like a good Aussie
a short black
which got me a funny look.
More than that it was a medical centre
and animal welfare clinic
from which a cat,
sleek long-legged and black
emerged to pay me special attention
jostling my coffee so it spilled,
mouthing the book I was sampling
so its corners suffered tiny rips
while four paws prodded my sleeve
and pummelled up my arm
and clawed around my shoulder.
I spoke to it soothing words:
is it fiction you object to
or all books? what medication
are you on? mild coffee might suit.
From the sleek black issued
a mingled purring meowing growling
and the eyes flashed fearsomeness.
Meanwhile an electrical storm
passed over and gutters overflowed.
The staff had made themselves scarce
leaving only handwritten notes stuck
to shelves: 'We all loved this one'
'Better than the movie'
'This series gets better and better'.
So they said. I doubted. Where
was the poetry section? Between Gay
and Gift Wraps. Neruda, Bukowski,
Rumi, Gibran, Poems for Funerals.
Omar Khayyam. The Golden Treasury.
Not even Plath? Oh what they had
of her was all behind glass,
with well-known pix, hard to read
without the superadded gloom
of Al Alvarez and the rest.
Salacious? I'd been guilty too.
The cat, retreating to the door
marked Veterinary Care
swished a discriminating tail
and leaped into the vet's chair
preparing to dispense advice
and pills to the pets of Primrose Hill.
Beyond the Medical Centre door
what changes, one wondered, were being
enacted to the natural order?
Behind the coffee machine
the barista (blonded hair a la Plath)
crouched pumping and pouring,
muttering inaudibly while
the grinder deafened the whole place.
Out of here. In a cloudburst fissure
I ran to my bike - chained to a pole
it had lost both wheels to a passing thief.
Howling I scuttled downhill flapping
my arms so the gale sped my flight.
Max Richards
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