Thomas March
Because she never went
outside, and no one knew
whether she’d had her shots;
because the officers
needed to know, because
she could have been rabid;
because she had bitten
my mother just before
dying blind and afraid,
hard enough to hit bone;
because my mother’s hand
had been red and swollen
for days, the officers
had to dig up the cat.
My mother insisted
on doing it herself,
and with the potting spade
in her unbitten hand,
she uncovered the grave
while the officers watched.
First, funeral flowers met
the unexpected sun,
and the small bells sounded
inside stuffed cotton mice.
Then it smelled of wet cat-
nip and the wool blanket
that she liked to sleep on.
Her face was still her face
after three days—the lips’
withdrawing from the teeth
could have been just a yawn,
the eyes half opening
as if stuck in waking—
not like when she found her
in an unused bedroom
closet, sick and stinking,
and reached in to soothe her.
She wrapped her in the sheet
and handed her over,
then went inside to dress
her wound again, and wait.
Thomas March is a poet, performer, and critic based in New York City. Aftermath, his first poetry collection, was selected by Joan Larkin for The Word Works Hilary Tham Capital Collection and appeared in April 2018. His poetry has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, The Good Men Project, OUT, Pleiades, and RHINO, among others. His reviews and essays have appeared in The Believer, The Huffington Post, and New Letters. With painter Valerie Mendelson, he is the co-creator of A Good Mixer, a textual-visual hybrid project based on a 1933 bartender’s guide of the same name; excerpts from the project have already been included in curated shows at Westbeth Gallery and The Delaware Valley Arts Alliance.
He is the host and curator of Poetry/Cabaret, a new performance series that brings together the city’s top poets, comedians, and cabaret performers for a hybrid evening of emotional whiplash in response to a common theme. A past recipient of the Norma Millay Ellis Fellowship in Poetry, from the Millay Colony for the Arts, he has also received an Artist/Writer grant from The Vermont Studio Center. In recent years, he has written and performed monologues at a number of venues in New York City, including Ars Nova, The Duplex, Joe’s Pub, The Peoples Improv Theater, and Sid Gold’s Request Room. Twitter: @realthomasmarch, Web: www.thomasmarch.org
