Shearing
Lily Beaumont
The wind complains like a cat.
Not mine, whose forsaken mewling startles her
awake and sets her rooting around my lap,
whose fine fur mats like clouds
smeared across the sky and sends me
reaching for the scissors, but a cat: a hunter–
leisured, lithe–batting my door back
and forth, not trying to decide which way
to go. It revels at the hinge, the rattling of wood
like a tooth in its socket, like a tooth jostling
in flesh. In the morning it may pay me tribute–a gutted Sun
Chips bag or a dandelion’s fuzzy scalp,
mothering me, taking me as its apprentice
on the prowl until I fill my doorstep
with prey of my own. At night,
it still stalks outside my window.
Lily Beaumont’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in publications including Prolit, Star 82 Review, Wrongdoing, The Shore, and Phantom Kangaroo. She has an MA in English from Brandeis University and currently lives in Central Texas, where she works as a curriculum/study guide developer and editor.