A creak in the door's hinge—that god-damn razzamatazz
blasting across this neat sleep-tight nighty-night sky
clear as a wide white waxy moon until that paradox
dong-dinging my stars awake, that low-below sullen saw
ever-so-slowly screeching as you, cat, wedge in your fat >luv,
foisting insidious noise toward my sleep-sloppy boys, you,
gluttonous in your lust for heat, prowling for feet.
Heave-ho we're thrown—one, two, three, onto awake's bus
in our going-nowhere-beds, a groaning-growling child-roar
jaggedly pointed at my dreaming head—strolling sultry Sadiq,
kneeling, fingering garments massed in a basket... POP!
Leave me alone, go back to sleep, but they won't go.
Mama, up, Up, UP! Lights, Mama, on, On, ON!
No, I say, stinging the surly dark, the darkling room.
Oh you cat, swirling about like sateen, purring like a girl,
purling, knitting the night aright with your keen knack,
quick-stepping around my impulse to sack you, rajah of this Taj,
rajah of this room, of this night. I, in my ratty flannel sari,
sing-song Lullaby & Goodnight, Rock-a-Bye, Hush-Hush,
twirling now, dancing over dinosaurs, boys in arm, rag-tag,
under-slept and overdrawn. I murmur my sleep-riddled fluff –
velour vowels, cottony consonants—nubbly as chenille,
wadding this tendered hour that can never be redeposited.
Xylophonically, rhythmically, I've hammered the scale's dark arc;
Yogi kitty on my bed: you play, I pay; you flow, I ebb.
Zounds how you sleep—I, almost as far from Zzzz's as A.
Cati Porter is a poet, reviewer, and editor of Poemeleon: A Journal of Poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming from kaleidowhirl, Literary Mama, MotherVerse, Poetry Midwest, Poetry Southeast, and in the anthologies White Ink: Poems on Mothers and Mothering (Demeter Press), Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel—Second Floor (No Tell Books), and Letters to the World (Red Hen Press). She lives in Riverside, California, with her husband and two young sons. You may read more of her poetry here and here.
