By Donald Illich

I’ve stopped dreaming of cats,
I now only dream of tax collectors.
The cats were nice, hanging out in yards,
lifting paws to catch plentiful birds,
waving their tails like flags of nations.
I rested on a pile of their bodies.
Allergic to fur, I sneezed myself awake.
When morning came live cats 
scattered under people’s porches
where they slept, dreaming
of mice colluding to destroy them,
catch them in nightmare holes.
The tax collectors did nothing I liked.
They opened briefcases to spotlight
paperwork I forgot, numbers crawling
over sheets like malignant snakes.
A group of them held me upside down
while shaking the dollars and cents
from my pulled-out pockets.
Luckily, the collectors had other homes
to search for scofflaws, and I woke
to the sound of TV static, the channel
temporarily erasing itself.
I wished for the cats to return.
For their claws to kill
whatever I didn’t want in life.

~~~

Donald Illich has published poetry recently in storySouth, Potomac Review, The Southern Review, B O D Y, Gargoyle, Atlanta Review, and The Louisville Review. His book is Chance Bodies (The Word Works, 2018). He lives in Maryland.