Two Poems
David Stephenson

Shelter Cat

for Francesca

Having determined that she needed a cat,
my daughter went to the shelter and brought back
the one next in line to be euthanized,

an older, ornery, ungainly short-hair
that mostly hisses from the bed all day.
It’s the unlikely apple of her eye

and rests in feline opulence amid
the fountain and the conical cat cave
and all the overpriced cat toys she buys,

which it takes as its due. It started with
her kind heart melting when she saw its plight.
Nobody who knows her is surprised.

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David’s notes: “This is pretty self-explanatory. My daughter Francesca, who works on batteries at Ford, adopted a cat about to be euthanized from a shelter, and proceeded to pamper it. This lucky cat, Charlotte, spent seven good years with her before passing away. I’m taking this opportunity to also throw in a picture of my own cat, Lester, a similarly pampered former stray who has been my life coach for the last eight or nine years. ‘Shelter Cat’ originally appeared in The Lyric, and is in my new collection, Secret Dance.”

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On the Road

for Luke

I install industrial robots
in every godforsaken Podunk town
and pole barn plant where our elite sales team
has sold a job through some huge underbid,

so I am front and center to explain
that their job won’t be finished by Tuesday
and will cost much more than twelve hundred bucks
and that they need electrical upgrades.

Then I put on my business face and wait
through all the thundering and foot-stomping,
the anger, grief, denial, and bargaining,
the threats to get me fired, the theater

of small-time life, so stale and pitiful.
And through it all I think of all the times
I’ve been away from home, the things I’ve missed,
the things I wish were different but which aren’t,

and wonder if they really aren’t aware
of how the world works at the bottom end
where skinflints cheat each other left and right,
and that sometimes it has to be their turn.

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David’s notes: “This poem doesn’t fit the issue theme, but I wanted to include it since it’s dedicated to my son Luke, who works in industrial controls and automation. It’s also pretty straightforward, describing the negative emotions and direct communication you often encounter in the manufacturing world, especially at production facilities. It’s always sad when money comes between people. ‘On the Road‘ was first published in Tar River Poetry, and is also in Secret Dance.“

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David Stephenson is a retired manufacturing engineer from Detroit, and the editor of Pulsebeat Poetry Journal.

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Two Poems David Stephenson

Two Poems
David Stephenson