don’t take any wooden nickels

From the cast, a kitten was told

she wouldn’t be needed for the third

and final act. They would replace her

with a recorded version of herself,

a rehersal tape where she said her lines

much too loud into the floor

mike, smooshing the words

into booming wordpaste. This feeling of:

why am I here?, compounded

with members of the production

asking repeatedly, What’s eating

you these days?, easily sent her

to reconsider a marrige to Joe

Brooks, man about the (small)

town of Giggle Water. Of course

this wasn’t the outpost’s real name,

it took on this cognomen

long before she refused to make

nookie with Jr. (Joe Brooks), and

the true date fell somewhere between

when the men went off to build

another torpedeo, and the women,

zozzled on what liquor was left

from the night before, were said to

“iorn one’s shoelaces”, which of course

meant some job with les stature

and effect than bomb building.

This was well before the time

kitten first heard the story of her father,

how he left one evening saying,

"I have to go see a man about a dog."

Kitten, in her period costume, smoking

and sad, taking in a little nip of the hair

of the dog outside the theatre, remembered

that time again. Called back

her mother’s long and silent breakfast,

making malt-o-meal just like always,

but this time, wearing her father’s

torpedeo suit: dark blue jumper, ball

cap buldging at the sides from the hair

stuffed inside. With a ladle,

her mother slapped at the air, flinging

malt-o-meal across the walls, while

quietly hissing: You slay me!