NOTES FROM THE CAT HOUSE

  Poems By

  Jack Ketchum

  A Crossroad Press Publication

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Smashwords edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition Copyright 2013 by Jack Ketchum

  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Meet the Author

  Jack Ketchum’s first novel, Off Season, prompted the Village Voice to publicly scold its publisher in print for publishing violent pornography. He personally disagrees but is perfectly happy to let you decide for yourself. His short story “The Box” won a 1994 Bram Stoker Award from the HWA, his story “Gone” won again in 2000—and in 2003 he won Stokers for both best collection for Peaceable Kingdom and best long fiction for Closing Time. He has written twelve novels, arguably thirteen, five of which have been filmed – The Girl Next Door, Red, The Lost, Offspring and The Woman, written with Lucky McKee. His stories are collected in The Exit at Toledo Blade Boulevard, Peaceable Kingdom, Closing Time and Other Stories, and Sleep Disorder, with Edward Lee. His horror-western novella The Crossings was cited by Stephen King in his speech at the 2003 National Book Awards. He was elected Grand Master for the 2011 World Horror Convention.

  Book List

  Novels:

  Hide and Seek

  Joyride

  Ladies’ Night

  Off Season

  Offspring

  Red

  She Wakes

  Stranglehold

  The Girl Next Door

  The Lost

  The Woman (with Lucky McKee)

  Novellas:

  I’m Not Sam (with Lucky McKee)

  Old Flames

  Right to Life

  The Crossings

  Non-Fiction:

  Book of Souls

  Turning Japanese

  Collections:

  Broken on the Wheel of Sex

  Closing Time – Collected Stories

  Peaceable Kingdom

  Sleep Disorder – With Edward Lee

  The Exit at Toledo Blade Boulevard

  Author’s Website

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  NOTES FROM THE CAT HOUSE

  Table of Contents

  INTRODUCTION

  JOHNNIE MACK BROWN

  HOBOE’S MEMOIR

  WHEN I AM A BOY

  ARTHUR

  KU

  KU TWO

  11/11/87

  ANNOUNCEMENT

  BEAST

  CONTACT

  CATS HIDE NOTHING

  SLEEPING WOMAN

  FIREFLIES

  HEARTS

  FOR CAITY

  CHRISTMAS DAY, 1969

  TO LANCE AND CATHY’S CHILD ON THE AFTERNOON OF HER BIRTH, JULY 9TH, 1970

  BILLY’S DAD

  BETHEL, NEW YORK, AUGUST 16, 1969

  A TERRIBLE THING

  WINGS

  MICHOU

  AN HONEST WORD

  DREAMS THE LUNA MOTH

  MONDO CANE

  ST. JOHN

  GREECE

  SWORD AND SANDAL

  CATS’ HAIKU FOR PAULA ON THE ROAD

  QUESTION

  SECOND VIRGIN

  REHEARSAL, MARAT/SADE, 1969

  POETIC

  TV GUIDE

  MATHEMATICS

  VINNI

  TRAGEDY

  THE TEACHER, 1969

  CRISIS

  FOR CUJO

  M.D.

  WALK

  BETHEL, NEW YORK , AUGUST 16, 1969

  JANIS

  A PROMISE

  MORNING STAR

  IMPERATIVES

  ON “THE GATES”, NYC

  CATSKILL MORNING OBSERVATION

  THE LETTER

  CLOCKING

  IMPERATIVES TWO

  NOTE

  FOR ABBIE HOFFMAN

  FOR JULIUS HOFFMAN

  KU YOU

  FOR K.

  RITUALS

  THAT MOMENT

  FOR PHILIP H. SCHREYER, 1924-2005

  OLD AGE

  SUICIDE NOTE #1

  EMPATHY

  Some of these poems have been previously published, in altered form, in THE DEVIL’S WINE, edited by Tom Piccirilli, HINT FICTION, edited by Robert Swartwood, on the Spiderwords website, edited by Rain Graves, and in chapbook form by Gauntlet Books, Barry Hoffman, editor.

  My thanks to Carolyn Hinsey and Estha Weiner for their guidance. And to the late Bob Booth, for suggesting this in the first place.

  INTRODUCTION

  In no way do I consider myself a poet. Nope. At best and most charitably, a stumbling naif. What I know about form, meter and structure is minimal. Mostly what I learned in college. My haikus are dodgy, my rhythms suspect. But I do write something like poetry every now and then and have since I was a kid.

  It was a good way to interest girls. And get the bad stuff off my chest.

  Stephen Sondheim wisely said that content dictates form, and sometimes something short and tight is what seems necessary to what I want to say at that particular moment — not something a novel or novella would explore, nor even something the length of a short story.

  What’s left but poetry?

  So occasionally I give it a shot.

  I’ve culled through years of these, dating back to the late 1960s, up through the present.

  Trust me, you don’t want to read the ones I’ve left behind.

  I’ve been asked to publish them.

  As with my men’s mag stories in BROKEN ON THE WHEEL OF SEX, I’m basically saying what the hell here. I’ll risk it. Noose around the neck. Hoping for that reprieve from the governor. Which for my namesake never came.

  Most of these are narrative pieces. Some even double as what Robert Swartwood calls Hint Fiction, wherein the lines break open to a wider imagined tale beyond. I’m a narrative writer and love stories and that sensibility leaks into the shortest of short-form too.

  Though now and then it’s sheer nonsense.

  When I write this stuff, my goal, technically, is simply not to waste words, to cut as close to the bone as possible and still make some kind of sense. The other goal is to evoke something — thoughtful or tender or just plain silly.

  And if that works for you even some of the time, I’m a-okay with that.

  — Jack Ketchum, 4/26/13

  JOHNNIE MACK BROWN

  i’m sorry

  to wake you

  sheriff

  but a man’s

  been

  killed

  HOBOE’S MEMOIR

  Do you remember when we were both children,

  that twilight summer spent in the Howards’ abandoned home

  behind the track?

  The two of us, with splattered shoes and wrinkled denims,

  the wife and husband of a thousand daydreams,

  the proud parents of Joey and Jimmy and Linda and Steve —

  all of them young,

  as young as we wanted to be,

  all of them trusting to us for blankets and supper

  and a new pair of shoes come September.

  And do you remember a night on the doorstep

  when we hid in shadow from your father’s voice calling us to eat?

  You and I, watching for first-star and youthfully spiteful —

  we stood silent, barely touching, waiting for him to pass us by.

  And I turned to you to laugh and tell you

  that parents didn’t hide on their own front porch —

  it just was never done.

  But you hushed me, pressed two fingers to my lips,

  turned suddenly beautiful and broke my heart.

  — For Chris Boyd, HOBOE

  WHEN I AM A BOY

  When I am a boy I stage a tournament

  or settle into an Indian village

  or find dinosaurs in the long grass.

  When I am a boy I learn from bo oks

  or without them.

  I sing myself to sleep.

  I stay out after dark and rise early in the morning,

  see myself in moonlight or sunlight,

  run in the snow, swim.

  When I am a boy I fight a forest fire

  And doze in the shade.

  When I am a boy I search for things.

  Spiders on the windowsill,

  a bird’s nest,

  hidden treasure,

  the Big Dipper,

  a tiny world beneath a rock.

  When I am a boy I run along the grass

  think hard and gather speed,

  and I can fly if the wind is right,

  right up through the trees.

  I steal grapes from Mrs. Allen’s yard

  even though she’d give them to me if I asked

  and they’re sweet and they’re juicy,

  the best grapes in the world.

  When I am a boy I sit on a rock

  in the middle of a stream

  picnic on Mrs. Allen’s grapes

  and I am never alone.

  ARTHUR

  He would never tell you this

  but Arthur suspects

  there is earth within him.

  He swallowed a watermelon pit

  and he is just a bit afraid

  of what will grow there.

  KU

  Asleep I am

  maiden and warrior.

  Waking

  I shall face riddles.

  KU TWO

  I am always leaving

  always staying.

  No wonder

  you distrust me.

  11/11/87

  Anyone sitting here?

  The seat was empty.

  Now, three years later that space is filled so completely

  that not a mouse, nor a roach, nor a gnat

  could squiggle in there.

  We talked and the clouds and stewards’ carts rolled by,

  just talk,

  just peanuts, vodka-tonic, scotch,

  no jets outside the windows burning

  and I remember turning to you,

  feeling the weight of months lift away,

  baggage handled finally,

  so that in the end on a gamble,

  as you were leaving,

  I told you my name,

  gave you my number,

  you remembered them,

  and now each night I see you there’s aviation

  and the steady thrum of wings

  through every day between.

  ANNOUNCEMENT

  Ladies and gentlemen

  due to atmospheric disturbances

  we will resume the movie

  after the following

  atmospheric disturbances.

  Yeeeeoooowwww!

  BEAST

  Beast always used to scare the shit out of me

  leaping from the bed six feet up to the top of the hutch,

  and those glass panes

  a cat could crash through each time.

  But I loved to watch her prepare and measure,

  her eyes wide, haunches twitching, bracing,

  getting it right.

  And heart in throat I never once tried to stop her,

  gasped, watched her hind feet slam the glass and

  forepaws grasp the rim and lift her up

  more gracefully than I’d imagined,

  defeating the danger, getting it right.

  She always scared the shit out of me every time,

  cat and glass.

  But it was what she wanted to do,

  for all I know what she was meant to do,

  and now that she doesn’t,

  age, cancer, frailty,

  perhaps she’s found some knowledge that

  she simply shouldn’t anymore

  it’s time she gave that up.

  I never saw her fail.

  I never saw her make the decision not to try.

  I miss her courage and I respect her mind.

  She settles with the same wide eyes for a touch.

  CONTACT

  What a cat does is complete you,

  much as a lover will, much as a poem will.

  The cat is not you but is of you

  and in that sense only, she’s yours.

  That’s quite enough.

  Moments after she was dead

  I cried the left lens out of my eye.

  It rolled away down my cheek.

  I felt like a goddamn fool, who needed to see.

  I collected it

  with her still lying warm across my lap

  and tried to put it back again —

  it seemed important.

  But it wouldn’t go,

  wouldn’t adhere.

  I tried again,

  it wouldn’t go.

  I was obsessed for a moment with the lens

  with putting back the lens where it was supposed to be

  so I could see.

  It seemed important

  so I tried again.

  I put it in my mouth and rolled it across my tongue,

  tasted salt and tried again and it wouldn’t go,

  wouldn’t adhere.

  But I wanted the touch and smell of her —

  that was more urgent.

  Especially the well-known scent of her,

  the musk and perfume of her breath and fur,

  so I crumbled the lens into a tissue and put it in my pocket,

  said to hell with it

  and did what I wanted to do and said goodbye.

  The lens does not complete you.

  The lens can not be urgent.

  It’s not necessary to see.

  What a cat does is complete you.

  In that sense, she’s yours.

  For Beast

  3/25/03

  CATS HIDE NOTHING

  Cats hide nothing.

  You may have a hellova time,

  should you care to,

  trying to figure them out

  but they’re an open book.

  Problem is, they wrote the fucker.

  SLEEPING WOMAN

  I watched you sleep.

  Sleep is like a pause in life with nothing certain, no guarantees,

  not even waking

  just a passage from one breath to the next as neutral as the stars.

  If there is a goddess of solace and renewal

  she shows her face then,

  perhaps only then,

  when a loved one’s face is free to age,

  to sweep across planes from child to woman to crone,

  when the flesh goes slack

  and still awards such beauty,

  such integrity

  as to warn the heart

  yet bind us,

  devote us

  forever to what we see.

  FIREFLIES

  I love you who bring me back in twilight,

  hand in hand,

  where we stand poised amid fireflies

  and imagine cold heat in cold light.

  HEARTS

  Change of heart

  Have a heart

  Win my heart

  Dear heart

  The heart of the city

  The heart of the problem

  A card game in which

  the object is either to avoid hearts completely

  when taking tricks

  or to capture all of them

  FOR CAITY

  Merry Christmas!

  I give her to you, son

  as balm, as solace, as responsibility, as love —

  happiness in a puppy’s eyes.

  She’s yours!

  Look!

  Pay attention and you won’t be lonely.

  She’s my gift to you.

  A child drifts, doesn’t see,

  misses the center.

  The center was there Christmas morning.

  So what of her then, this offering?

  It’s not in question.

  The gift binds to the giver, the gift is wise,

  sees her life’s purpose,

  knows love when she sees it

  and responds in kind.

  Between like souls there is no such thing as a gift,

  only giving,

  on and on.

  CHRISTMAS DAY, 1969

 

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