Thanks

I cannot thank you,little cat with serious eyes,for your gift of a dead mouse.

I flee from remindersof killing. I am a vegan, and it wouldbe easier if you were too.

But then I would loseyour playfulness and pounce, and turnyou into a timid, nibbling rabbit.

I love you for those things,for your wish to feed me, and foryour love for me, strange as

I must appear to you: so huge,so hairless, so hopeless a hunter. I am thankfulfor what I cannot understand, this strangelove than can span species.

From Guest Contributor Cheryl Caesar

Cheryl lived in Paris, Tuscany and Sligo for 25 years; she earned her doctorate in comparative literature at the Sorbonne and taught literature and phonetics. She now teaches writing at Michigan State University. Last year she published over a hundred poems in the U.S., Germany, India, Bangladesh, Yemen, and Zimbabwe, and won third prize in the Singapore Poetry Contest for her poem on global warming. Her chapbook Flatman: Poems of Protest in the Trump Era is now available from Amazon and Goodreads.