Michele Karas
Hymn
There is traffic on the way to the vet
and the cat lies dying in my lap.
He is bald like the back of an old
priest’s head and the mass on his shoulder
feels hot and gonad-like in the cup
of my helpless palm.
There is a beatific light in his eyes as
Bach’s Air on the G String pours from the radio.
The last car horn he will ever suffer
sounds on the street outside the window.
He is every child I never conceived,
sharp-jointed and soft-eyed
like me, every lover who ever left me.
He is the friend whose brain erupted
spectacularly into a riot of parrot tulips--
every sibling who couldn’t be saved.
He corkscrews his head to one side.
A few cries escape his cat mouth
and his bladder releases something
more akin to amniotic fluid than to urine.
Back home, belly down, I slide my hand
between my legs and soothe myself
to climax, ashamed of my own need.
Listen, this is a hymn for everyone
who is not with me tonight.
Michele Karas studies poetry in the MFA program at the City College of New York, where she is also a graduate editor of Promethean. She is a recent recipient of the Stark Award for Poetry and the Slice Literary Writers’ Conference Award for Nonfiction for 2014. Her poem “Lemon Blossom Lane” was published in the Spring & Summer 2014 issue of Alaska Quarterly Review. She can be reached on Twitter @Small_peace.
Return to March 2015 Edition
There is traffic on the way to the vet
and the cat lies dying in my lap.
He is bald like the back of an old
priest’s head and the mass on his shoulder
feels hot and gonad-like in the cup
of my helpless palm.
There is a beatific light in his eyes as
Bach’s Air on the G String pours from the radio.
The last car horn he will ever suffer
sounds on the street outside the window.
He is every child I never conceived,
sharp-jointed and soft-eyed
like me, every lover who ever left me.
He is the friend whose brain erupted
spectacularly into a riot of parrot tulips--
every sibling who couldn’t be saved.
He corkscrews his head to one side.
A few cries escape his cat mouth
and his bladder releases something
more akin to amniotic fluid than to urine.
Back home, belly down, I slide my hand
between my legs and soothe myself
to climax, ashamed of my own need.
Listen, this is a hymn for everyone
who is not with me tonight.
Michele Karas studies poetry in the MFA program at the City College of New York, where she is also a graduate editor of Promethean. She is a recent recipient of the Stark Award for Poetry and the Slice Literary Writers’ Conference Award for Nonfiction for 2014. Her poem “Lemon Blossom Lane” was published in the Spring & Summer 2014 issue of Alaska Quarterly Review. She can be reached on Twitter @Small_peace.
Return to March 2015 Edition