Lyov’s Purr
By David Capps
Warm water roils up from where his ribs
meet their broth, his frame shakes with dew,
as if many cats within him paused there,
whose tones were, though confused en masse,
a beginning Sunday hymnal at church. Often
a voice does not know what directs it, in what
direction it lies, must be content with signs
love, bubbling as he sneaks behind our necks,
hair standing on end. The divine in us rises
as from a yawn’s infectious perturbation,
interspecies felicity; in that moment we’re
many bodhisattvas, sleepy, trading squintful
looks of laziness, boyish, mewling, crouched,
slouching in the pews—He sees something:
an insect, a shadow, far thunder widens his eyes,
jarred out of being a cat person. When blue
morning arches its back, the continuous night
ends with a need surfacing at the tip of the rib,
there in the light, an outright mewling. An E-flat
wends its way to unison, singing cat-gut.
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David Capps is a philosophy professor and poet who lives in New Haven, CT. He is the author of four chapbooks: Poems from the First Voyage (The Nasiona Press, 2019), A Non-Grecian Non-Urn (Yavanika Press, 2019), Colossi (Kelsay Books, 2020), and Wheatfield with a Reaper (Akinoga Press, forthcoming).
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