A Cat's Jabbing Shadow Poem by Felix Bongjoh

(i)

The sun tumbles
from a glassy sky
chewing everybody -

every animal too -
to throw them out
into shadows

trailing them, standing
with them, crushed
beneath their feet;

rushing faster than
their silhouette-steered pace.

Falling on heads,
sky's bouncing balls
of sun drop

with rays thrusting them
into stretchy silhouettes
of themselves,

tiptoeing them, falling
before them even,
as they race, not catching up
with themselves,

the sun cleaving their
thrust images
from their carved-out
planted or rolling bodies.

(ii)

Under clothed trees,
leaves interwoven
spin so loosely
as to allow showers of sun

tosculpt firm-contoured
shadows
of every passing body,

falling on earth's
green grass
or scrapedfloor.

The bright day
is thrust like
a mirror capturing

leaves sailing
in the wind;

and leaves dropping
from the hands
of a rattling breeze.

They leave shadows
to fly like black butterflies.

But sun munches hue,
devouring
yellow and red flowers

and spitting out
moths andblack spiders
flattened into creeping
shadows brushing soles

or standing shadows
melted into hiding specks
beneath planted soles.

(iii)

A snarling, growling cat
sneaks in on her
own body and bounces

back to a tight shade,
a shadow-swallowing nook.

Mewling back, as she walks
along, she swells
into a full shadow,

her body stretched out
into her stretchier body,
a purring lurking cat

at which she growls, jumps
and smashes into specks
on the floor following her,

as she pounces
on them without
making a kill

of the dark sprayed-bodies
dwindling into specks
at their roaring paws.

The cat flees herself
all afternoon, settling

under a candelabra
by my couch poking her
with another shadow,

soot hardening beneath
her body
stretched out
to poke her
into a growling horn.