I Shelter the Predator

I shelter the predator, feed the feral cat.
She brings me her kills, singing of predation.
I don’t watch her feast, though in the morning
on the welcome mat, small smear of gut, tiny head
with whiskers that I tip into the trash.

I catch the same small spider in a jar, carry her
outside again, then blot up a nest of sugar ants
with a wadded paper towel. I pretend
meat is not an animal.

I see the fall before it happens, hear the cry
of glaciers calving out of season, clatter of cobbles,
another plastic sack tangled in the algae bloom,
our metastatic interventions. And I take shelter

in the ancient olive, the bark beetle’s unreadable
calligraphy, the silvered weathering of stones,
how our small pirogue glided deep into the jungle
where we thought we caught the morpho’s
iridescent flash.

Simultaneous Translation at the Peace Accords

I try to listen
for the melody, a threadlike
stream into the straw that lies
across the lip of my two lips.

I am
that straw.

I have to concentrate
to keep the flow; a backup or a kink
could blow the whole damn thing
apart. Inhale, exhale.

I am
that breath.

I take each word and listen
for its note. The syllables
whistle through me, arc across
the sky, land in a stranger’s field.

I am supposed to be
a pipeline through neutral territory. My job
is to see from both sides. Equally.
Impartial so why do I always feel
two-faced?

I am
that pipeline,

multinational, financed by their claims
to civility, and how they pretend
not to be playing me like a fife.

I am
that fife.

Karen McPherson is an Oregon poet and literary translator. She has published one full-length collection, Skein of Light (2014) and the chapbook Sketching Elise (2012). Her poems and translations have appeared in literary journals including Beloit Poetry Journal, Cirque, Cider Press Review, Cincinnati Review, Potomac Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, december, and The Women’s Review of Books. Several of her poems with accompanying translations into French by Québec poet Louise Dupré appeared in Mïtra: Revue d’art et de littérature. A professor emerita of French literature at the University of Oregon, she has also published two scholarly monographs and a book-length translation into English of poetic essays by Québec poet Louise Warren. Between 2013 and 2017, she worked as an editor in the Airlie Press poetry collective. Her website is kmcphersonpoet.com.

Published October 8 2022