Issue 17 June 2018

Cats

Editor's Comments

Issue 17 highlights my favourite animal - the cat. I've been a slave to various cats throughout my life. I love their haughtiness and their total disregard of humans (apart from meal times). I'm envious of the fact that they are able to spend two thirds of their life asleep. As a poet have noticed that a number of poets have written excellent poems about cats and I wanted the same for Allegro. As the vast number of poems reaching my inbox showed I'm not alone in my love of cats and I hope you enjoy this selection.

Sally Long



Poems

Remembering Cleo

Snug in the crook of my arm

you’d shift as we lay together,

one paw languorously extended,

hypnotised by your purring

into absolute content.

I’d watch those beautiful owl eyes

narrow then shut then again

open less wide until a last yawn

closed on silence, yours, mine,

and we went our separate ways.

John Mole

Work

There is little reason,

there is no good reason,

there is insufficient reason,

there is only a feeble,

wholly inadequate reason

for getting up and leaving you snug in bed

(with me replaced by a smug cat)

Seth Crook

The Aspirationals’ Cat 

The door frames are all similar and there’re no shops. 

It’s one of those estates built for an apparent class 

of aspirational people. It’s the middle of the day  

and nearly all the houses are empty, and a cat  

is scratching at one of the doors where there’s no flap. 

It’s one of those odd blends of colours, like a drip painting.  

Maybe they were in a hurry in the morning, and it went  

out through their feet. The scratching is annoying.  

Maybe the cat is just annoying, and they’ve left it out  

as a punishment for getting out. Maybe it’s just one of those cats  

that seem to exist purely for their inconvenience, 

that keeps wanting to go in then out then in then out,  

not eating its food, but pawing where the food’s stored  

for no reason that’s comprehensible, it carries on,  

but what it’s aspiring towards, ultimately, who can say? 

Samuel W. James

Monologue 

I can live without company but not without

talking to myself. Blame it on the cat

who became a person. No one visits.

Procedures must be followed to a t.

Cooking for one equals tears an onion outlasts.

Perhaps these ministrations become habits.

Nothing new under the sun, all is vanity,

Permission to speak? Ecclesiastes.

I could have been more than I am but

things can’t be undone. The accident

happened. One wrong move and still at night

it could happen again. When your back quits

is a matter of time. Be blameless, soft-

toned, don’t froth so at the mouth of it.

Judith Skillman

Barrington Megatron Morley

Barrington Megatron Morley

black and white creeping

claws pouncing

mouse.

Snap!

Penny Tuttey

Haiku Cats – take your pick of the litter

Voyeur

Inquisitive...
the gingersnap cat stares as
I get undressed.
------------------------
Maestro

What does this cat think
strumming his tail with such ease
to fugues of Bach?
-------------------
Shut Eye

Black and white kitten
lying under clothesline in
soft circles of sleep.
-------------------
Street Walker

Calico cat
curving corners
against the cold.
--------------------

Free Throw

A tiger cat with
big green eyes
tosses balls of yarn.

Joan McNerney

The Lion 

At a place translated

as Return to the Wild,

the warden killed

his walkie-talkie,

hushed us

and extinguished the lights

of our open-topped jeep.

The persecuted beast

is active at dusk —

from murky savannah

a male stalked up 

to the vehicle’s skirts

and paused, dead still,

pinning us to the last bare 

urge of evening in his eyes,

hunting us with smell,

daring us to challenge

his right to the stench.

Not a soul spoke

though insides were screaming

as primordial hackles rose,

a sense of fight-or-flight

eventually invoked,

until, with a growl

and a shuffle in his dung, 

he loped away at the click

of the ranger’s safety-lock

and tourists firing 

quips of relief

from a quicksand 

of primeval subconscious.

Tim O’Leary

This Morning

He goes for a run this morning

still dark out

proud of that

he takes it slow

when he gets to the hill

he says out loud

I'm going to run to the top fast

and he does

There's a Henry Moore sculpture up there

a woman slipping into stone

red in the face and gasping clouds of steam

she looks at him

and the stone woman curves

swells and falls like the sea

water rolls down her cheeks,

breasts, then over the whole city

Coming home feels stiff

and he nods to the man running the opposite way through rain

heading uphill in pilgrimage

his face caught between

headphones and a bad dream

when he gets home I'm still in bed asleep

with the cat watching me like a lover

the windowpane is thick with milky beads

I'm glad that it has rained.

Ezra Miles

Life on hold

Julie or possibly Jackie is – apparently

too busy to respond but –

as the voice reminds me frequently –

she still attaches great importance to my call

and so has kindly placed me back on hold

But somehow –

even the cat doing a headstand

is not spectacular enough today –

it would take at least a somersault

and perhaps a triple backflip

and the endless loop of on-hold tunes

to burst unannounced into a bonfire

of inanities to put me right,

and even then it’s only maybe

Julie or possibly Jackie is, I know,

a good person, mother, daughter, lover,

but she is also, as far as I recall

the third person in a row to thank me for my call,

then hand me over to her colleague -

also called Julie or possibly Jack or …..

a click, a pause a silence

expectation raised –

and then –

Josie or possibly Jamie  

are still – apparently

too busy to respond but –

as the voice reminds me yet again –

they still attach a great importance to my call

and so once more have kindly placed me

back on hold

But somehow…….

Roger Bloor

From out of the night

Over the threshold  of sleep it appears 

in ripples of flame and shadow, trails 

your scent —

a soft pad through the half-light. 

The sinews of your heart almost snapping, 

you recoil from teeth and claws; 

but it settles against you, presses close 

its warmth soft as kitten fur

and your knot of fear is only a breath away 

from the rasp of  tongue on your skin.

Yvonne Baker

Dispensary

I would like to sell my cat’s memory

in smoke pricked with foxglove

from a travelling cabinet. 

Tiny vials of wild.

He remembers through rough wounds,

in the vernacular of seasons,

crushed leaves and rodent skulls,

in the prickle of storm and bitter of insects. 

He remembers in lonely nights and fur

snagging between elite and dismembering claws 

and of older times of ox bone

and the seduction of spitting fires.

He remembers sun reflecting off

a starling's eye and wallowing 

in the stolen comfort 

of a boys bed.

I remember the sea; but it is gleaned

from a picture or book, even when 

the spume spits in my face and 

the shingle sings.

I remember our love, but in a way that 

is carefully folded.

Even my memories of memories

are put in this box or that.

All my memories are carbonated;

pressurised with the unreal.

The cat blinks and asks

where have you buried them?

A sip of his memory tastes of taut lungs,

nosebleeds in summer,

and makes me choke until I cough

out those truisms that had drowned me.

Rushika Wick

I Am Jack the Cat

I am Jack the cat.

What could be better

than that? I am the most

intrepid orange,

my claws are the spears

of Achilles.

I purr Fuer Elise,

I dance James Brown,

I nap Chopin by the fire

—I am Jack the Cat.

What could be better than that?

Leland James

Poetics the Ginger Cat

—Ποιητική: ‘poi-EIGH-tee-keigh’

By a caged fire I read. Around me walls

of ancient lore, of poetry and war….         

Prometheus bound, flames behind glass doors:                               

I pause, plying the sage, musing upon

a well worn Mediterranean page. Poetics            

now rises before me upon this little stage:                    

I watch the cat play.

Flute and sinewed lyre, a smirk of teeth,

the lightness of cat feet in Titian wreath.

What grace of flowing shoulder, savage art!                          

I watch the cat play.

What dread symmetry! hammer and golden chain.

Cat paws toss, tease and bat. I gasp. I laugh.

I smile. I shiver. I ply this heart and brain.

I watch the cat play.

If Aristotle kept a cat, its name

would be Poetics—and it would be a ginger cat.

Fire and ice and catnip mice: Poieighteekeigh.

I watch the cat play.

Leland James

After Reading a Poem in Which the Speaker Hits a Cat on the Interstate

with apologies to Jeff Worley

I feel a little queasy

and take a sip of the wine I poured myself

when I gave up on work tonight and decided

to sit down and read poetry instead.

With a little more intention

I pet the cat on my lap—

McGuffin, my oldest,

whose brother died this winter.

The poem was well done,

ending with a beautifully honest image

I will not reveal here, as you may one day read it,

and it is ungraceful to scream

“Spoiler Alert!” in the middle of a poem.

Anyway, trust me. It’s good.

I hope you stumble upon it sometime.

If you do, perhaps we can talk.

If you do, perhaps you can tell me how you reacted

to the soft thud, the black bundled thing

knocked from one machine to the next,

to the speaker who, as the poem’s theme required,

kept driving without letting loose his breath,

leaving me hoping that, as poets often do,

this one made up the story, or at least changed details

so that he hid the time I hope he took

when he did exhale slowly, when he did stop his car,

stepped out on the shoulder despite freeway danger,

made sure that nothing more could be done

before going on to do nothing more—except, of course,

write the wonderful poem that leaves me here pausing,

reaching out for a pen,

drinking a little faster,

loving more exquisitely

what tenderness is given in this life.

Jo Angela Edwins

Letter

To the Editors

of the important magazine

whose rules for submission

declare that no stories,

essays, or poems

about cats will be printed:

Dear Sirs–

and we know you are “sirs”--

understand this much–

each night we stare

at the pale of the moon

and pray you will never

know loneliness,

need comfort even

liquor can’t provide,

or shiver at the sting

of your own snowy feet in winter.

If you do, may the horrible moment

give you adequate pause

to beg nature’s forgiveness

for your ill-conceived clause.

Jo Angela Edwins

A Sonnet on Grace 

There could be a reason my cat shows grace.

A woman from the church brought her to me..

She roves the house bestowing redemption.

The frayed fabric mouse she leaves on my bed—

it’s her sermon on the Beatitudes.

The fern fronds she plucks, places in my shoe—

she’s a church lady arranging flowers.

She’s grateful— those teeth will always be gone

but her street wounds healed. Still, she hides, cloisters.

The house-painters called me a crazy cat

lady with an imaginary cat.

They never see her but I do. She moves 

room-to-room with assurance, connection.

She kneels, knowing, with the greatest repose.

Jane Simpson

The cat sitter 

A week in the bunker;

'Resting'; collapsing. You say 'just chill out with cats'; in your mind I am a different kind of babysitter; one with feline paws and a hybrid mind. 

The streets here are familiar but the pain has eased since my last visitation. 

Then in Sainsbury's and the Co-Op supermarket, old wounds are resurrected; 'There's something wrong in your head', they say. 'There's something wrong in yours', I say. 

I cannot bear the oppressiveness of the market, or the machinations of oiks who prod and poke unprepossessing customers like me; older, and without protection. 

In their eyes I will always have something to prove. If I survive it is because I continue to fight. 

When I am here I always feel like I am walking along the street with my petticoats showing and my hair in a royal mess. Like I am being tarred and feathered by everyone I meet. 

Inside the bunker the cats are my home. I sit with them in the kitchen; loving, but knowing I must always be prepared to leave. I must always be ready to transform again. 

And their purring renders me silent. 'Sweet things', I say. 'I am here because of you'. 

Claire Sexton

Domestic

When Cain stored his grain,

a horde of black rats raided.

A gaunt wildcat followed

to feast on that plague.

When rival brothers charred

offerings to the Lord,

the cat followed the odour

of the herdsman’s bait.

When Cain and Abel quarrelled

in jealous love and hate,

the cat, like a shadow, followed

and, yawning, lay down to wait.

When Cain struck down his brother

and crouched there shocked and stiff,

the cat crept up and licked

blood from the farmer’s fist.

When Cain was cast out, scarred,

to wander the fierce world,

the wildcat did not follow

but, for the first time, purred.

Dan MacIsaac

Leopard

Firelight glints

on onyx teeth

and topaz eyes.

Coal rosettes

glow, scorching

a pelt of gold.

Smoke spooks

that prize from

its pungent den,

contraband flushed

careening to

garrote of net.

Black market bait,

trafficked exotic

smuggled over

warped borders,

bootlegged for

a carnal trade.

Beauty defanged

and declawed, all

grace deformed.

Lightning trapped

in a metal pen

bolted shut,

its last charge

shorting out  

in a tin can.

Dan MacIsaac

Reigning Cats

They say you shouldn’t keep
more cats than you have
rooms in your house,
though they probably mean
your average, 12 x 14 foot rooms.
Perhaps at Versailles
you could squeeze in a few more.

Cats playing tag and skidding
after balls down the Hall of Mirrors,
accepting as their due bowing
servants, curtained beds,
and a profusion of gold
reminiscent of their days
with the pharaohs.
Every strutting tom
would fancy himself the Sun King.

You might be able to house
a whole dynasty of cats
if they were allowed to roam
the grounds, willing to risk
the trick fountains
and clumsy feet
of bourgeois tourists.
Though, frankly, cats are not
so keen on égalité and fraternité
as we.

Alarie Tennille

Negative Space

The cat, still just a kitten, curled

on the back of the couch, looks up

at every noise to see that I am

still in the room. We have an understanding.

He follows my every move. I feed him

and offer him empty boxes he fills

with yarn. He’s learning to live

with complacence. I’m learning to live with silence.

Not exactly silence but the absence

of the sound of human voices. Replaced

with clicks, whirrs, and chirps that signify

movement (something to do with physics

or waves or the existence of a vacuum).

The broken January trees fan the house

with small gentle taps and shudder

before bouncing back up in the breeze.

Anne Graue

The Good Old Days

If I could travel back in time

to one day, it might be

the day we pretended

to drive the red convertible

Austin Healey abandoned behind

the fence, where I sang “Me and Bobby McGee”

and you sang “Country Roads,”

spending hours driving to California

in that suburban Kansas lot

behind ranch houses lined

up with driveways wide

enough for cars and games

of jump rope in the early seventies

complete with fringe, bandanas,

and a brother in Viet Nam whose

letters we read with black and white

pictures while we played

“Honky Tonk Women” on the record

player as loud as it would go, distorted

and scratched, and we danced

on a picnic table in the garage

where Topsy had her kittens,

and we watched them emerge

one by one.

Anne Graue

spring sunrays -

a kitten opens its eyes 

for the first time

Goran Gatalica

Iambic Hotline

Iambic Hotline, thanks for calling. How

may I direct your call? I’m sorry, please

hold (muzak plays). Apologies, meow-

(oh dear, the cat is back!) what are your needs?

If you don’t mind, speak louder. I can’t hear

with all the rhyming in the background and

this silly puss, of course, with her raised rear-

she wants some scratches! Now, what have you planned?

A villanelle? A sonnet? Some blank verse?

You do know that no one will read it, though.

It’s sad but true. I’m sorry that sounds terse

but kitty here (and I) want you to know.

Unstressed, then stressed! Relax, don’t sell you soul-

let’s place pens down, put more milk in her bowl.

Karen Shepherd

Night Pearl

In the warm shell of blankets

curves my crescent moon body

and curled inside like a pearl

my cat breathes a wave crest

and fall, his heart beat reaching

for the shore of my own.

As the moon begins to fade

in dawn’s wash of watercolour

we’re adrift, aloft,

hover just above the Earth

dreams still a tangle of reeds

that catch at our ankles

bob us up and down again.

Until the sweetness 

strong as a beacon’s light

pushes open my eyes, my heart

and the thrum and purr of morning

vibrates through, we surface together  

to greet the birds, the wind,

day stretched out before us 

vivid as a cat’s bright eyes.

Colleen Lynch

Standoffish

They rat-trapped all the clichés – perched on walls, shared naps

on the deep sofa, were playful, docile, gave the slip

to mutts, snagged their curious claws on endless balls of string.

All those memories are all too strong.

But most of all an impression sticks of standoffish-

ness. That attitude of theirs! Both blithe and selfish,

refined in coolly careless glances back: “and you are . . ?”

Even cooler, contradiction came when they’d purr

beside you, on you, padding at dawn across the bed;

they knew you then, all right. As household creatures should

who need you – or at least would, nestling, seem to need

you – keenly. Who seemed (we fell for it) as if they cared.

  

Michael Caines

   

Contributors

Yvonne Baker has been published in numerous magazines. Her work has been included in Second Light’s anthology Fanfare; the Emma Press anthology The Sea;  and Paper Swans anthologies Chronicles of Eve, The Best of British and Love Pocket Poetry.

Roger Bloor is a retired psychiatrist and is currently a student on the MA in Poetry Writing from Newcastle University studying at the Poetry School in London. He has published poems in the Hippocrates Prize Anthology (2017) and Still Born (Affect Formations 2018) as well as occasional online Instagram poems.

Michael Caines is a journalist living in London.

Seth Crook loves puffins, has taught philosophy at various universities, rarely leaves Mull. His poems have recently appeared in such places as The Rialto, Magma, Envoi, The Interpreter's House, Causeway, Poetry Scotland, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Snakeskin, Antiphon.

Jo Angela Edwins teaches at Francis Marion University in Florence, SC. Her poems have appeared in various venues including Calyx, Adanna, Quarterday Review, and New South. Her chapbook Play was published in 2016. She shares her home with seven cats and one beleaguered dog. 

Goran Gatalica (Virovitica, Croatia, 1982.) graduated physics and chemistry in Zagreb, after which he entered the doctoral study.  He publishes poetry, haiku and prose in literary magazines, journals and anthologies He won several awards for poetry and haiku in Croatia and abroad. He is member of the Croatian Writers’ Association.

Anne Graue, the author of Fig Tree in Winter (Dancing Girl Press, 2017), has published poems in The Book of Donuts, Blood and Roses: A Devotional for Aphrodite and Venus, The Plath Poetry Project, and Rivet Journal. Sheis a contributing editor for the Saturday Poetry Series at Asitoughttobe.com.

Leland James is the author of seven books of poetry and a book on poetry craft. He has published over 200 poems worldwide, including The Lyric, Rattle, The Spoon River Poetry Review, London Magazine. He was the winner of the UK’s Aesthetica Creative Writing Award and has won or received honors in many other competitions.www.lelandjamespoet.com

Samuel W. James' poems can also be found in Allegro, The Eyewear Review, Dissident Voice, The Literary Hatchet, London Grip, Clockwise Cat, Peeking Cat, Sentinel Quarterly, Scarlet Leaf Review, Door is a Jar, The Beautiful Space, Elsewhere Journal and Ink, Sweat and Tears.

Colleen Lynch left her childhood farm (and the multitude of cats there) to study creative writing at York University in Toronto. She is moved to write poetry, both by country memories and by the city life. Publications include Whetstone, Women’s Education des Femmes and Paperplates.

Dan MacIsaac writes from Vancouver Island. His poetry has appeared in many journals, including Magma, Agenda and Stand, and is forthcoming in The Interpreter’s House. Brick Books published his collection, Cries from the Ark in September 2017. His website is danmacisaac.com. 

Joan McNerney’s poetry has been included in numerous literary zines such as Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze, Seven Circle Press, Dinner with the Muse, Blueline, Halcyon Days and included in Bright Hills Press, Kind of A Hurricane Press and Poppy Road Review anthologies. She has been nominated four times for Best of the Net. 

Ezra Miles is a poet and filmmaker from London. He studied Moving Image at The University of Brighton [BA].  He is interested in the magic of the mundane and the modern, near-subconscious occult rituals we all perform.

John Mole's most recent collection is Gestures and Counterpoints (Shoestring Press). He has received the Gregory and Cholmondeley Awards for his poetry, and the Signal Award for his poems for children. His work can be heard on The Poetry Archive website ( www.poetryarchive.org )

Tim O’Leary, former photographer and archaeologist, has been shortlisted in competitions including Live Canon, Munster Lit Fest, Poetry on the Lake and Strokestown. He won Cork’s Wild Atlantic Words in 2015. His work has appeared in Poetry Salzburg Review,  andotherpoems, Ink, Sweat and Tears and The High Window, as well as several anthologies.

Claire Sexton a Welsh, forty-something librarian and writer, living and working in London. She often writes on the subject of mental illness, with which she is well-acquainted, and has been published in Ink, Sweat and Tears, Peeking Cat Poetry, Foxglove Journal, and others. 

Karen Shepherd lives with her husband and two teenagers in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, where she enjoys walking in forests and listening to the rain. Her writing has been published in various journals including riverbabble, CircleShow, The Society of Classical Poets, The Literary Nest and Writers Resist.

Jane Simpson’s chapbook, On the Porch, Under the Eave, was published in 2017, and her book, Blessings of the Beasts will be published in 2018. Her poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, BorderSenses, The Chattahoochee Review, Penwood Review, POEM, Poet Lore, Psaltery & Lyre, Sojourner’s and elsewhere. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Judith Skillman’s recent book is Kafka’s Shadow, Deerbrook Editions, 2017. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including Cimarron Review, Shenandoah, Hawai'i Review, and J Journal, and in anthologies, including Nasty Women Poets, Lost Horse Press. She has been a writer in residence at the Centrum Foundation, and is the recipient of a 2017 Washington Trust GAP grant. Visit www.judithskillman.com, jkpaintings.com, https://www.facebook.com/judith.skillman

Alarie Tennille (Kansas City) was born and raised in Portsmouth, Virginia, with a genius older brother destined for NASA, a ghost, and a yard full of cats. She graduated from the University of Virginia in the first class admitting women. Alarie hopes you’ll visit her at alariepoet.com.

Penny Tuttey is a previously unpublished rather senile poet writing for pleasure for many years now.  Barrington was a rescue cat who provided great concern bringing live mice and birds into the house as gifts and chasing them madly.  Eventually a fox got him.  He is buried under the horse chestnut tree.

Rushika Wick is a poet and doctor with previous poetry and prose publications including in Litro, MIROnline, Word-o-Mat Edition 2 and Cold Lips Ed.3. amongst others. She has previously run a pop- up clinic prescribing poetry and have read at various literary nights. She is currently a student at The Poetry School in London and is mostly writing about social contracts in relation to body and mind.