"13 Black Cats Under a Ladder": the original 1990 poem

(the original poem published in the Summer 1990 issue of The Lithic Review)

	Taken aback by the outpouncing Noir (not for the
	first time of course)
	I accidentally christen the kitchen floor with a bottle
	of dime store wine
	Still half full it slips from my grasp to
	smash on the linoleum
	Thick green godforsaken glass with no business shattering so
	damned easily however cheap
	With Noir having ambuscaded me a dozen times before
	why then this occasion—
	Mincing away now from the strewn breakage and spillage
	all asniff en route
	As the winespread engulfs bits of bottlesplinters and turns
	them into glassy islets
	Each immuring fragmentary miniatures of myselves and cornered Noirs
	reflective in the overhead
	Scintillas against the purpling floor: an overturned canopy of
	a starry night sky
	Its horizons swirling outward, opening up and draining away
	at my vertiginous feet
	Down with the old maelstrom I go: hanging onto
	the precarious terminal rung
	Of the ladder Jacob saw and Gatsby saw but
	up which neither climbed
	Clinging there encircled by a brood of tiny Bagheeras
	with eyes like crows.

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