Considering my last entry I thought I’d share a poem I wrote a couple of months ago. I was in a weird mood, my cat was being weird, and I really felt like writing in the voice of an adolescent Hmong boy. If you’ve ever read ELL Hmong writers they have a distinct way of writing and speaking. For example they don’t remember to put words in past tense. They also seem to wander in free-association thought land, but occasionally they have some extrememly insightful things in their writing that I’m never quite sure whether they meant it or not. There’s something in the way they write that I warms my heart and also annoys me. I don’t know. There’s some connection there. Anyway, here it is:

Weirdo.

She not like other cats
She more like dog
It like she think I her kind
Or she my kind
Or some kind half breed,
Closer than we think.
I know where she like
to sleep best: in my lap.
When she is comfy she cleans
when she full of play she
fetch or hide or bite.
Her annoying when she get hungry
She such a baby
Whining whining whining
“Shut up,” I tell her
But she jus keep it up
Rubbing my leg or pawing my back.
I teach her to massage.
She like my slave I give
food if she massage my back.
But my cat she drool on me.
She must be imagine like I am
a piece of steak and she
is tendering me and
imagine that she slice tiny garlics
into my steak and grill it (with
butter) so that it is a little bloody.
I would drool too.
I call her “weirdo” like
she wierd or something.
She like it because I only tell
people I love “wierdo.”
I say-I say “weirdo!”
And she say “clclclclcl”
I tell her “reaowuh…^”
She responded “giblets?”
In that way she is like other cats.
That how we different too.
She get happy when she hungry
I get mad like I will
eat you when I get hungry,
But we tell, “Hello” to each other when
I get home,
I pet her fur.
She got a good fur
Cuz I turn it off the heat
When I go and she grows hairs.
That why my lap so nice to her
It warm like mother milk.
She not home until I come home
and my lap open up for her
Then she home.
Then she breaths deep and
hide her nose under her wrist,
curling like orange cane,
wrapping like a gift
I open knowing what inside, a boy
who picked out my own present but
have to wait until my birthday.
Her white belly and gold eyes
open to me and tell me
” I like you. You the kind I
can trust.”
I stretch the orange accordian
Her buttons click and chirps.
Weirdo. Simple cat.
You kinda dumb but you different.