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

Raina K. Puels is a queer/poly Boston-based writer, educator, and kinkster. She holds an MFA from Emerson College and reads poems for Split Lip Mag. You can find her writing published or forthcoming in The Rumpus, PANK, Dream Pop, and many other places listed on her website: rainakpuels.com. Follow her on Twitter: @rainakpuels.