Filthy Tomcat by Alan Britt

A breeze yowls
like a filthy white tomcat.

A freight train carries coal,
old lust,
through a distant capillary
of our neighborhood.

Amazing how tree frogs,
without cable TV,
without a commercial dating service,
can pair up
long before cicadas
call it quits
for the evening.

The midnight breeze’s mercury tongue
licks my legs.

Fireflies blink
inside maples
tonight.

Their abdomens,
fists of coal
derail when freight cars
suddenly have massive
heart attacks.

A common loon
dives through nervous ribs of moonlight.
By the time she surfaces,
the train has been
declared a total loss.
The neighborhood evacuates;
the insurance adjuster
gulps two strong
martinis.

By now the coal
has compressed into
the fresh
bodies
of fireflies
scattered
across our yard
by the lust
of the filthy white tomcat.

Author bio:

Alan Britt’s recent books are Greatest Hits (2010), Hurricane (2010), Vegetable Love (2009), Vermilion (2006), Infinite Days (2003), Amnesia Tango (1998) and Bodies of Lightning (1995). Britt’s work also appears in the new anthologies, American Poets Against the War, Metropolitan Arts Press, Chicago/Athens/Dublin: 2009 and Vapor transatlántico (Transatlantic Steamer), a bi-lingual anthology of Latin American and North American poets, Hofstra University Press/Fondo de Cultura Económica de Mexico/Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos de Peru, 2008. Politically speaking, Alan has started the Commonsense Party, which ironically to some sounds radical. He believes the US should stop invading other countries to relieve them of their natural resources. He is quite fond of animals both wild and domestic and supports prosecuting animal abusers. As a member of PETA, he is disgusted by factory farming and decorative fur. Alan currently teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University and lives in Reisterstown, Maryland with his wife, daughter, two Bouviers des Flandres, one Bichon Frise and two formally feral cats.