J. L. YOCUM

Where the kittens hide

I keep finding the corpses of kittens
in the last place you’d expect. The hamper,
my briefcase, the bulk nuts bin, in the library
tucked behind reference volumes of medieval
folklore, or the poetics of astronomy.

They won’t say how they died, but they tell me
their names: Clover, Honeydew, Thorn.
Each becomes a tender task:
how to dispose of them without shattering.

The trick is to soften. Like their soft shut eyes,
their soft tufted ears, their soft swells
of belly and their incomprehensibly
small soft paws.