Hour of Kitten Prayer

 

My first-ever quintuple Golden Shovel poem, written from 5 vertical 16-word lines of Elizabeth Willis’s “The Witch” (lines emboldened in order).

Hour of Kitten Prayer 

The hour when the black cat appears -when a 

happiness glows on a green skin of a witch 

of Salem, a witch of magic, a witch who may smile 

an hour, who desires a kitten - is the hour to cry 

entire buckets. Something real - hungry, out behind the 

house, prowls beside that witch. She sharply 

may turn. Is this what makes her throw a can at it? 

Be not a stalker - make the night not 

ruined as hers hinges on so delicate a sight

by moonlight. She is binding sticks to make a soup of fish! 

Witch love will hold tight for a kitten by a 

hair on her chin, slip a stirring feeling known 

as touching hearts. It flows like a book of water, criminal 

a word stretching into realms of heartache with dying 

metal cat statues her common ailment, her glimpse of 

cross bearing, a glove of prayer in her hand, quenching her kitten thirst.