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The Poet Runs Over a Cat
 
The poet's been in a rut for weeks. 
Blank paper is a white plague. 
He takes a cruise and runs over a cat. 
Sickened, he drives home and chugs a six-pack.
After emptying his bladder, he wobbles 
back to the scene, like a character 
from Hitchcock who has to know. 
 
A crow lands in the road and pecks 
at the carcass. The poet feels rotten. 
On the way home, a poem comes to him. 
It's about running over a cat. 
It's about a crow plucking the eyeballs 
from the cat's skull. 
 
But he knows how to use metaphor. 
It becomes a poem about a figurative crow 
sucking the eyeballs of a figurative cat 
run over by a figurative poet in a rut. 
(The rut is literal, not figurative. 
That would be pushing it.) 
 
When he gets home, he fishes a discarded napkin 
from the trashcan under the kitchen sink,
plops on the floor and begins to write. 
The words flow out  as naturally 
as watery vomit after a book signing. 
He finishes in no time. Satisfied, 
he rushes to the bathroom 
and empties his bladder again. 

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