I was told to stay away,
not to throw rocks at her windows,
not to look while she danced
naked on her front porch
I could only imagine her
as a mad sorceress or a witch,
her nose jagged and festering,
oily hair stuck to her head,
laughing out of control
on a gutted mattress
somewhere in the unpainted bungalow
beyond the overgrown hedge
Neighbors remembered she stopped
going to church, had groceries handed
through a hole in the screen door,
that cats began coming:
orphan cats with wild faces,
scowling, bitter cats,
desperate cats licking fur raw,
cats cocking tails when I came near
The morning the police wrestled her screaming
into the paddy wagon,
shrieking words I was never to say,
they counted forty-three cats,
and in her basement found
rows and rows of glass jars
filled and labeled
with cat excrement
Three long nights the cats anguished
over their loss, slipped through bushes
one by one, eyes glaring,
red with stolen secrets