reading cheap yellow makes me want to make out with someone inappropriate

i can’t remember the last time
i made out with someone inappropriate
maybe poet always wearing blue
doubly against the advice of an undergrad professor

who made sure to look me in the eye
& not at her knitting when she said
don’t fuck anyone in your mfa program
especially if they’re in your genre

i lived in her apartment sophomore year
for the month she was in south america
& i killed her cat well
the cat died while i was living there but
i still felt responsible

poor black & white thing struck
by a car came home to die
the landlord buried him in the backyard
so i didn’t have to

there was a second cat monster
an all black chonk
who when his brother was alive
delighted in tag-teaming birds
through the cat door

many mornings i woke to flapping wings
the thud of bird on window

i slept with a pair of my professor’s gardening gloves
on the nightside table slipped
them on & followed a trail of feathers
to the stunned bird & smiling cats

i grew adept at the procedure
propping open the back door
sneaking up behind the robin or winter wren
cupping their warm quivering bodies
then the release