The Month of Moxie
Author Note: This poem was originally published in the online journal Half and One.
Oh hi, cat.
I didn’t see you there
at first
with the severed head of a squirrel,
skulking under my car.
“It’s OK,
Because baby, I’m feral, too,” I said,
It poured forth
so naturally,
as talking to the tame never does —
Gamy blood from an animal’s throat.
We became
fast friends
after we trapped you.
You, my moon-faced little love
were so skinny
and flea-ridden
and hard-angled then.
Look at us now —
sitting like toasty loaves
lined up in a windowsill,
smiling smugly at passersby,
eating cheeses.
No visitors for us, please.
I had lost my job that September
and had that month
to domesticate
the both of us.
And though I still have you
well-past then,
that time is
consecrated, sepia-soaked —
forever cradled in memory
as “My month with Moxie,
Timestamped: Sept., 2022.”
We were going to fix you
and punt you back to the wild.
It wasn’t love at first sight
I admit,
but now I live to
kiss the baby-powder-and-syrup-smelling
space betwixt those ear-points —
untipped because you
are just too precious
to identify as uninitiated
before everything else you are —
Seven and a half pounds
of orange-creme arrogance,
full of courage,
feisty, murderous
and loving,
My Moxie-woxie,
so ravenous,
our little apex predator,
sashaying around the
indoor/outdoor reaches
of the earth
with those all-hearing
radar ears
and so-much-seeing saucer eyes.
You know you’re
made for warm laundry
and air conditioner hums
and barren
hunting ground
alike,
just like me,
and like everyone
who holds such
kinship with a cat.
We’re industrious
as hunters, baby.
We make sense
of this wilderness, mutual:
We conquer, inflicting
puncture wounds
to earth and tree
and vein and paper
with the sharpest implements
we can find —
The ink spills from our kill
and we call it making a living.
© Maggie McCombs 2024. All Rights Reserved.
