James Cagney is poet and the author of Black Steel Magnolias In The Hour of Chaos Theory, (Nomadic Press, 2018), winner of the PEN Oakland 2019 Josephine Miles Award. His second collection, Martian: The Saint Of Loneliness, (Nomadic Press) was awarded the 2021 James Laughlin Award. James is a Cave Canem fellow who lives in Oakland.
DEAD CAT ON THE LINE
What’s a man to do raising a son he doesn’t recognize
sit in the garage and smoke like a god
read the cursive divination unfurling mid air
contemplate open heart surgery of a Cadillac
while cancer pulls into the driveway.
Death, the rich uncle who never knocks, his
smile an unpaid debt. On his final day,
daddy almost said something before he called shotgun
and split, leaving in his wake an inventory of broken
bottles, quarters stacks high as bullets on a barrelhouse
bar, an echo of sons spilling everywhere.
