The air tastes like an angry cat,
cut grass, hot tar, and rotted plums.
The snake flickering its tongue calculates
its chances. It feels cold: the shadow
of the cat bending over it,
saying
try, try.
It moves on the cement making a C. It makes a C
for caught, for claw, a C for the clouds
drifting overhead, into the mountains,
a C for cat, for catastrophe.
It makes an S for the silence
it feels like a stone dropping toward it, an S
for supple, for slither, for what it is: a snake.
It makes an S for the sky.
Strands of light twisting
around its spine it makes
a knot for its confusion.
It straightens, and begins sliding forward
out of its body, out of its own mouth, leaving
its skin for the last time, the first
number 1 and the letter I.
John Witte’s poems have appeared with regularity over the years in such publications as The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Kenyon Review, Antaeus, and American Poetry Review.
He has received two writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as a residency at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and numerous other grants and awards.
He is the author of LOVING THE DAYS, published by Wersleyan University Press, and THE HURTLING, forthcoming from Orchises Press in 2006. He has also edited numerous books, most recently, THE COLLECTED POEMS OF HAZEL HALL (Oregon State University Press, 2000).
He lives with his family in Eugene, Oregon, and works at the University of Oregon, teaching contemporary literature, and editing Northwest Review.