Vigilantes:
or how we killed the cat lady
The tall fence got our attention.
Vines climbed themselves many times,
twisted boards where we spied inside.
Cats in every window stretched, napped,
chased flies against the glass.
We speculated purposes
of wheels, spindles in overgrown grass.
Then we saw her.
Everything she wore, stockings, headscarf, dress
was thick and black.
She poked a stick into the mess
beside her house, her back so bent
her head stuck straight out.
We looked at one another,
clamped our mouths behind our hands
to keep from laughing.
Tricia had to laugh so bad
she fell on the cement sidewalk.
Diane's mom said that was a cat lady
we had seen, they only leave their yards at night
to steal children who stay out after dark.
Then we remembered kids we had known:
the Sheehey twins from Pierce Street
and Robbie Brown
who used to ride his wagon down
the hill from Lowrey.
They had disappeared
and now we knew where they had gone.
We filled a plate with mud-crust
and the red-orange berries
moms said would kill us if we ate them,
left it at cat lady's gate and ran--
never went back to see what we had done.
One day Rita's dad said the city would tear
that old place down,
the lady and her cats were gone.
I cried and cried and confessed our crime.
Mom said we did not kill her with our poison-berry pie.
But we tried.
