Two Poems by Matt Dennison
/Perfection
Unless something is perfect I don't give a damn.
But perfection includes the kitten my daughter
found yesterday morning after a powerful storm,
hanging by its front leg one foot off the ground
pinched between shrub limbs with an eye
so infected we thought the eye was dead,
wished the kitten dead, immature maggots
crawling the skin she scrubbed in the sink,
scraped thick chunks of matter from the eye
with Q-Tips duly sucked before using
then took to the vet who set the leg,
gave medicines for eye, maggots and dehydration
and is now the purring ball of blue-eyed fur
she carried to her grandmother's funeral
the day after I dreamed she and I were flying
a very small plane, she piloting until I noticed
the sudden influx of violent birds and WWII planes
filling the sky so I thought I'll take over…
at which point the plane shot straight up in the air
and I realized I did not know how to fly a plane
any better than she and we landed on her grandmother's
house and her grandmother was very angry to have us
uninvited as she had “people coming over tomorrow”
but she was finally beautiful, skin so fresh, hair so sleek,
and it was only when I awoke and remembered her
funeral was today that I laughed. Perfection
is often rotten, but it's all there really is.
Until I Listened
I truly despised the sound of the cat’s lapping—
on and on and on the water harvested, ripped
from its placid lake to travel the depths’
insectile broth, opaque’d of necessity borne
within. Such an idiot journey—the fecal instant
delayed, souped repetively: a thousand complaints
unanswered: why why why cried the waterfall
must it be us to flush life’s guts when all we want
is to revel in the sun, disband and float reborn,
one drop to be millioned, each landing on
garbage, leaf and limb—but it is the passage,
we remind ourselves, through which we grace
and grandeur, the cat’s vagina as suitable as flower
to travel dessicate nights, urethral dawns, so lift
your cup and drink us down, soft mouth,
drink us down and piss.
Author’s Note: Both of these poems are based on actual events that, in the process of writing them, expanded beyond their straight-forward beginnings through the triggering of forgotten associations along the way. I had the first line of “Perfection” in my notes, which caused the remembering of the kitten, which led to the remembering of the actual dream, which had been completely forgotten until my daughter told me about taking the kitten to the funeral.
“Until I Listened” began with the writing of the first line after I had removed the cat’s food and water bowls from my writing room, which, silence restored, led to my hearing the water itself complain of its own torture until “we” made the leap of acceptance (though the bowls remain in the hall...).
Matt Dennison is the author of Kind Surgery, from Urtica Press (Fr.) and Waiting for
Better, from Main Street Rag Press. His work has appeared in Rattle, Bayou Magazine, Redivider, Natural Bridge, The Spoon River Poetry Review, and Cider Press Review, among others. He has also made short films with Michael Dickes, Swoon, Marie Craven, and Jutta Pryor.
