poems that Cat wrote.

Katie liked barbies
and I liked jumping off rocks
so we jumped
with their swimsuits & ballgowns
in our pockets until her mom yelled
lunch!! and we feasted
ending always with juice
the flavor of everything red.
we tumbled back outside
dirt-sandcastles under the porch,
battling imaginary pirates,
playing with worms when it rained
and one day she said
where's new york? and one month later
I waved goodbye

the new people in their old house
painted it bluepurple and bulldozed
our rocks into the woods
and I don't know who Katie is
anymore, or even if she found out
about new york. I can’t remember
if her brother played with us,
or if they had a swimming pool
and I wonder if she has forgotten
too.

Inside, Out.

The radiator is whistling, crooked and drunk in its corner. There are millions of captured teakettles inside the coils, screaming to escape its clutches.

There is a man outside on a broken bench, poised with notebook and pen. The sunshine people walking by are impressed that he is a writer. He lets them believe, and makes scribbles and little drawings of the clouds. The sky is hurling angry bits of itself to the ground - he hurries home to tape garbage bags over the windows.

happy birthday.


i called your house
today, to inquire about
plans for your 21^st
and how many bottles of
jameson you’d –
on the third ring my heart
fell out, bouncing sloppily
and disappearing into a shadowy
corner and my eyes
made foreign shapes out of my
bookshelves and armchair,
but light around the borders
and glowing, focusing on the sharp
carved edges of your name on that
speckled marble, catching the light
with a clean, bold finality.

how many years, decades,
can you carry over; a
place setting at easter
for your shimmering memory.
if there are sycamores and elms
toppling to forest floors
and there are no ears around,
it was not a silent effort,
only unacknowledged.
i wonder how many birthday candles
should be illuminating tonight’s
creeping darkness -
and the difference in remembering,
imagining out of respect for you,
and scrambling at holding on
for the sake of me.

- Cat Brousseau