Jill McDonough
Poor Pussy
Carl says he wants to open a door
in Ed’s chest and crawl in, which makes us fall
in love with Carl. We want to be near
him, stand too close
in bars. Carl makes us want to play
Poor Pussy, a parlor game we learned when we
were five. My grandma taught me. You
can look it up. You keep a straight face
while someone pets your head and says
poor pussy. Poor, poor pussy. Or
at least you try. I am a Poor Pussy
champion, want Carl to lose to me
again and again. Come back, Carl,
we love you. Carl, we’ll let you win.
Jill McDonough is the winner of a 2014 Lannan Literary Fellowship and three Pushcart prizes, she is the author of Habeas Corpus (Salt, 2008), Oh, James! (Seven Kitchens, 2012), Where You Live (Salt, 2012), and REAPER, forthcoming from Alice James Books. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and Stanford’s Stegner program, she taught incarcerated college students through Boston University’s Prison Education Program for thirteen years. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Slate, The Nation, The Threepenny Review, and Best American Poetry. She directs the MFA program at UMass-Boston and 24PearlStreet, the Fine Arts Work Center online.
Return to July 2015 Edition
Carl says he wants to open a door
in Ed’s chest and crawl in, which makes us fall
in love with Carl. We want to be near
him, stand too close
in bars. Carl makes us want to play
Poor Pussy, a parlor game we learned when we
were five. My grandma taught me. You
can look it up. You keep a straight face
while someone pets your head and says
poor pussy. Poor, poor pussy. Or
at least you try. I am a Poor Pussy
champion, want Carl to lose to me
again and again. Come back, Carl,
we love you. Carl, we’ll let you win.
Jill McDonough is the winner of a 2014 Lannan Literary Fellowship and three Pushcart prizes, she is the author of Habeas Corpus (Salt, 2008), Oh, James! (Seven Kitchens, 2012), Where You Live (Salt, 2012), and REAPER, forthcoming from Alice James Books. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and Stanford’s Stegner program, she taught incarcerated college students through Boston University’s Prison Education Program for thirteen years. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Slate, The Nation, The Threepenny Review, and Best American Poetry. She directs the MFA program at UMass-Boston and 24PearlStreet, the Fine Arts Work Center online.
Return to July 2015 Edition