Poetry By David Cazden

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Cat's Cradle

We found her in a shelter
sick with herpes felis.
She never breathed easy,
sneezing on walls, leaving
blood dyed tears
like petals on the pillows.
Still she followed us,
house to house, job to job,
so we named her Shadow.
Better now, with doxycycline,
she chases crickets, moths
in a feline circus
on the summer lawn.
Whenever we lie down,
Shadow crawls between us.
Sometimes I drift away
to her wheezing breath,
thinking of my brother,
OD'd at 35.
I remember us as kids
standing in the yard,
sun dipping in the hollies.
And the clarity of burial day
in an old growth cemetery,
family at the grave, 
leaves and seedpods drifting
at our feet,
and I feel our bed turn
with earth in orbit
with the planets and clockwork moon,
keeping time as they always did
at our old house―
where below peeling gutters
and shedding oaks
we left our footsteps.
I pet Shadow's fur,
a deepening softness
without beginning or end.
Then I remember
to clean her face
and eyes with saline.
She pulls back, stretching
in a feline curve
dark fur spilling on the sheets
like night along the sky,
to the slip of dawn.




​
My First Job

I traced electrical schematics
at a computer terminal, luminous
in monochrome, and turned
a pencil sharpener's
manual crank handle―
The scent of pencil shavings
always reminded me
of sweaters after a rain,
of slick streets beyond
Thanksgiving, when mature
maples droop wet hair
along their branches.
Just out of school,
my desk was strewn
with gum wrappers, coins,
unsent letters home.
Despite San Diego's
sun-plump afternoons,
its ocean sunsets
the color of blush wine,
I missed eastern seasons,
sudden as snowfall in my lap
and the swish of your winter coat
when you removed the clasp.
I missed arms of frost
wreathed around the windows,
air seeping under doors,
wheezing in the furnace.
When I finally called
our conversation cracked with static
from thunderstorms back east.
So I finally quit, piling books, papers,
memos, on my desk. Flying back
I sipped in one last sunset―
my old life's light
across my lips
which I held for you,
as the plane banked east,
below the citrus moon.

​


David Cazden's second book of poetry is The Lost Animals (Sundress Publications, 2013). His work has appeared in the past in Passages North, Nimrod, The Louisville Review and more recently in Rust + Moth and Valparaiso Poetry Review. David was the poetry editor for the magazine, Miller's Pond for five years. He lives in Danville, Kentucky.
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