This poem is taken from PN Review 234, Volume 43 Number 4, March - April 2017.
A Translation & Three Poems
Cat
freely, after Baudelaire
Come to my warm heart, handsome cat, revise
your nails, soften your feet
and let me drown myself in your handsome eyes,
all metal and agate.
My fingers repeatedly slither
over your head and along your fluent back
till my hand is drunk on your fur
and we sing the body electric!
I long for my lover. His stare,
like yours, would be frozen
gunfire.
From head to toe, his air
of pungent, arrogant black man
wrecks me with desire.
A Kandinsky Woodcut
Childishly shapeless in his bell-sleeved nightgown,
...
freely, after Baudelaire
Come to my warm heart, handsome cat, revise
your nails, soften your feet
and let me drown myself in your handsome eyes,
all metal and agate.
My fingers repeatedly slither
over your head and along your fluent back
till my hand is drunk on your fur
and we sing the body electric!
I long for my lover. His stare,
like yours, would be frozen
gunfire.
From head to toe, his air
of pungent, arrogant black man
wrecks me with desire.
A Kandinsky Woodcut
Childishly shapeless in his bell-sleeved nightgown,
...
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