- Gerri Leen
Selected Poetry by Gerri Leen

Photo Source: EVG Photos
Catsplay
You mesmerize me
Your fidgets
Your squeaks
I watch you
More than you realize
Licking my chops
Wanting more than this
Unrequited longing
Through a glass
Nimble bird of a man
Tempting in your flashes
Of brilliance
Sometimes the cardinal
I chirrup for
Sometimes the hawk
That makes me flinch
Will you see me?
Will I get you?
Will this window
Always separate us?
Off you go
My purr turns to a hiss
Some birds mate for life
Do you?
The Neighborhood at Night
First nights in my new house
Roaming through rooms in the dark
No streetlights to brighten
Corners like at the apartment
Just porch lights, always on
The fronts of the neighbors lit up
Even mine, an intense blue-white
Probably irritates everyone
But bright bulbs leave no shadows
And I live alone
Toes sink into new carpet
Cats following as we learn this new
Topography. Our world suddenly so big
Three stories, so many rooms, but yet
It feels small, it feels cozy
Never more so than when
Everyone else is asleep around us
No cars go too fast down
A street made to be sleepy
No dogs barking, no saws buzzing
Just the reassuring
hum and chirr of crickets
Of frogs and cicadas
And sometimes the scream of a fox
One night a litter of kits, playing on the
Neighbor's porch
I've seen the sun rise
from these windows
Pulled covers over me like some
Suburban vampire
Cherry-wood blinds hold back the light
Morning commuters whiz by
Lulling me to sleep
All safe, all sound
Everyone knows:
bad things come at night
Someone should keep watch
Even if it's migraine making me
Pace the halls, roaming like
A revenant in the moonlight
And not some sense of honor
Or community
I'm not the neighborhood watch
But whatever the reason I'm up
I imagine I know the nighttime
Version of our street better
Than my day-treading neighbors
Who comes, who goes, which lights
Stay on, which go out
In the quiet time, the silent hours
The time most people sleep
Put Your Mind to It
The snow bites as it lands on my skin
The air is crisp and new
I shovel my drive, the task not urgent
No work to get up for in the morning
I do this because I choose to
Not because I have to
Each slide of the shovel
across the asphalt
Sounds different
A dusting near the garage door scrapes less
Than deeper snow
at the bottom of the drive
Where it all collects
I note the warmth of my hat
The sweat on my hair
The soft tickle of the shearling boots
Wear them barefoot to stay warm
So strange in winter, but it works
My glasses slip down
My nose drips
I feel alive in a way I never do inside
Pushing this snow around
Cleaning my space
Seeing my cat watching me through the door
“Whatcha doin’?”
I murmur nonsense to him
Not caring if the neighbors hear
This is my world
This is my house
This is my time
This is my path
This is my snow
And I will clean my drive
With the whole of my being
While I listen to the sounds of
My neighbor across the street
The wind blowing stinging snow
The click as the motion light goes off
The soft cry from a lonely cat indoors
And the scrape, scrape, scrape
Of my shovel, creating a safe space
Black asphalt emerging
Before the snow can turn to ice
Terraforming
It's a scar
On the land
That we ride over
Packed-down sand
Mixing with red clay
An adhoc motocross
During the afternoon
An illegal drag race
At night
Now, in the early morning
A place for secret meetings
Drug dealers or lovers
If they don't mind dust
We mind dust
This mare and I
When it's caused by tires
Instead of scouring winds
We hate the relentless
Growl of motors
The thump-thump bass
Of overly ambitious
Mufflers and speakers
Blasting out well past
The area of the carnage
This place used to
Be full of peace
Now they've ripped it
To finely packed shreds
Gerri Leen is a Pushcart-nominated poet from Northern Virginia. She has poetry published in: Eye to the Telescope, Star*Line, Dreams & Nightmares, Songs of Eretz, Polu Texni, NewMyths.com, Neo-Opsis and others. She also writes fiction in many genres (as Gerri Leen for speculative and mainstream, and Kim Strattford for romance) and is a member of HWA and SFWA. Visit gerrileen.com to see what else she's been up to.