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CAT WOMAN

 

Cats exercised in the garage.  Cats

kept in cages along the walls.

Two double mattresses pad the door,

keep the locals insensible.

 

Once a week she upbraids old Grumble

she rents a small sub-arch flat to.

With him gone she’d sell to a builder.

Even his son says he’s no use.

 

On the waste ground between the archway

and dual carriageway beyond

she chats up boys.  Do they break windows?

They do nothing.  Nor yet does she.

 

Till one of her daughters, well-dressed, sniffs

at the house plants and wants money

for her cracked-out sister who turns tricks

and never talks to her Mum now.

 

What’s she to me? asks the Cat Woman.

What are my fine daughters to me?

Then: out of hours at the old man’s door,

an awful night, picking up stones,

 

fracturing all his windows, letting

his oil-fire oil drain from the drum

outside his kitchen.  Home through the cramp

of the outer city’s blank wind.

 

A month.  The man gone.  And a fat cheque

on its way to her mad daughter.

But the cats pay.  Two are set to fight

till their ears gash and one is blind.

  

Alan Marshfield

  

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