Poetry
Margaret Young

Photo Credit: Marju Randmer/Flickr (CC-by-nc)

1.

Carlos comes in, shakes snow from his paws,
crunches some California Natural then sits
to lick his crotch with that perfect vertical
leg thing all cats do.
Because I teach
pop culture I feel compelled to read
someone’s review of the new Britney Spears
album so then of course I have to watch at least
two videos and now she’s starring in my fantasy
Eva Tanguay biopic, dressed in feathers
or pennies, kissing fellow vaudevillians
singing I don’t care.

2.

There you go again, heart.
I don’t thank you, you and breath
enough for all you do. We liked
those vernal pools, skunk cabbages
no bigger than eggs, pale scrim
of last year’s beech leaves, snow-melt,
mud and granite blocks from walls
and glaciers, granite patched and pied
with lichen, moss.

3.

Cake for breakfast, followed by yoga class.
Lots of inversions, my mind clear
of Britney Spears until shavasana,
corpse pose, all of us trying to think about
elephants, their strength and grace,
I’m lying there and she drives out
the elephants with dancing.

Out in the woods the stream’s
still talking to the downed
cedar. And in the wires and air
the music goes around.

Margaret Young is the author of three collections of poetry, Willow from the Willow (Cleveland State Poetry Center), Almond Town (Bright Hill Press), and Blight Summer (Finishing Line Press). She teaches at the Global Center for Advanced Studies and lives in Beverly, Massachusetts. Email: margaret7414[at]hotmail.com