Charlene Fix

 Taking a Walk in My Animal Hat

From Taking a Walk in My Animal Hat

Tony Johnston

White Cat Winter

From The 20th Century Children's Poetry Treasury

Joseph O. Legaspi

The Bringers of Bread

From Imago

Brian Andreas

Porcupine

From Mostly True

Richard Brautigan

Surprise

From Knock at a Star

Stephen Dunn

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From New and Selected Poems 1974-1994.

Molly Peacock

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From The Second Blush.

May Swenson

The Secret in the Cat

I took my cat apart
to see what made him purr.
Like an electric clock
or like the snore

of a warming kettle,
something fizzed and sizzled in him.
Was he a soft car,
the engine bubbling sound?

Was there a wire beneath his fur,
or humming throttle?
I undid his throat.
Within was no stir.

I opened his chest
as though it were a door:
no whisk or rattle there.
I lifted off his skull:

no hiss or murmur.
I halved his little belly
but found no gear,
no cause for static.

So I replaced his lid,
laced his little gut.
His heart into his vest I slid
and buttoned up his throat.

His tail rose to a rod
and beckoned to the air.
Some voltage made him vibrate
warmer than before.

Whiskers and a tail:
perhaps they caught
some radar code
emitted as a pip, a dot-and-dash

of woolen sound.
My cat a kind of tuning fork?—
amplifier?--telegraph?—
doing secret signal work?

His eyes elliptic tubes:
there's a message in his stare.
I stroke him
but cannot find the dial.

From 100 Plus American Poems

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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From A Coney Island of the Mind.

Lucille Clifton and Brian Andreas

The first 2 are Lucille Clifton





And the last 2 are Brian Andreas