Music

To the cats, we speak like music,

our bodies delight with perfume.

And the birds that to us sing 

to them crinkle like opening bags

of chips, an unwrapping burrito,

a top popping with soda fizz:

their bodies tense with want.

When we talk at night together,

the cats collect between us.

Their bodies dead as pelts, they purr

and listen to us speak, content

in a field of comforter fringed 

by human hips in repose. When 

we fall asleep, they wander off, 

unamused. Then they exchange

murowls, purowls, hurowls

until I rise and complain and hurl 

a balled-up sock, not at them,

but at their hideous caterwauling. 

They stop, and stare, hopeful 

the music will begin again. 

Outside, a nightbird sings.

1. Music

2. Pelts

3. Purowls