Even in retreat, something of her gait recalls
past generations. The refrigerator hums
a tick too loud, and she, this eight-pound daughter
of the street, sprints for the box spring down the hall.
She doesn’t mind her whiskers, sits with one leg
stretched out, toes segmented and clawed, tail
and stripes in parallel, rhomboid head settled
between two paws. Yes, the ottoman will do, though
not before those high-beam eyes sweep over
the rotting fruit of the kitchen and the window sill
succulents. Even what smells like her smells wrong
to her. She scents the hidden patches of spilled beer
–Blue Moon and something vanilla—all while bobbing,
trying to see both above and below, ignoring the artful
vanishing point of the horizon, something about
a lack of perspective. The perimeter check is only
a formality—beasts these days are bloodless.

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Natalie Bavar is a queer, Iranian-American poet who grew up in Brazil and currently resides in Salem, MA with their lovely partner and lively cats (Dora, Sprout, and Beans). Their work has appeared in Up the Staircase Quarterly, and is forthcoming in South Dakota Review. They hold an MFA from Boston University, where they were deemed the “Sestina Mad-lad” (for good reason).

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