Turning into a Cat While Dying

B.R. Dionysius

At the end you shall all be curled like a cat asleep

in its shard of sunlight. Sunlight that cuts deeply

through the planet as a scalpel will slide home in

its body-sheath. A sword stuck in a stone that no

one can pull out to claim your brighter kingdom.

In prehistory you lost your tails; odd appendage

deemed too unwieldy to push through the scrub

& blady grasses that broke cover & ran into the

plains when the tall trees died en masse. But the

big cats kept their sturdy rudders to guide them

over the rapids of their great hunt & crash upon

prey. Slow-mo swish of their ritual snake-dance

mesmerizing monkeys so out of their depth now

that the boabs had caved in like a carcass. Your

heads upturned as a cat wanting its belly rubbed.

Your inverted smiles from the bed radiating out

from your faces like the last light from a dying

star whose warmth is felt by no one. Like a set

of whiskers you all use to plumb the tight space

life has left you in at the close; to see if you can

squeeze through it as your mane continues to

grow since nobody told it to stop. Your bodies

curled like a cat’s, creating a furry ouroboros,

swallowing your own imaginary tails as you all

begin to end. Last petting of your head. Cheek

where pheromones release their tenure. Your

jawlines rigid as felines’ ears that prick up on

hearing the plink of porcelain in the kitchen;

plate’s scrape that signals a final feast. Yellow

eyes slitted through pain, through breath that

exits like a nocturnal beast to chase elsewhere.

Cats, stealing the warm spot you once slept in

when you don’t arrive back home, or waiting

at the front door for a car that never pulls up.

Things flying open & swinging shut like a cat-

flap as your old bodies turn in slow circles like

brain-bored beasts trying to get as comfortable

as you can before your lengthy afternoon nap.

Death licking its paws to slick down your hair.

B. R. DIONYSIUS was founding Director of the Queensland Poetry Festival. He has published nine collections of poetry. His latest collection, Critical State, was published in 2022. His tenth collection, The Eromanga Sea, and his eleventh collection, Extinction Sonnets, are forthcoming in 2025. In his spare time he watches birds.