Three Poems by Amanda Katz

Three Poems
by Amanda Katz

Big Guys

Big guys are interesting, the bigger the less
predictable. You can’t climb them. I’ve known
a few interesting big guys, some carried by trucks
or cranes, some expandable, some filled with
buoyant gas. I knew a guy who was big—
not gigantic, but big—who worked at a desk
in a field of grass. At the other desks were small people.
Little busy ones, slight, without shoes or hats,
small enough to sit their desks on his desk.
He underestimated himself and sat in a hole, but he
still seemed confident. He got picked for the mission.
I knew another big guy who thought he was training
for the NBA. I was able to see how he actually felt
like a 6’8” baby. Who’s going to baby the big guy?
But I could see him as he wanted to be seen.

Bunny How-To

Sometimes Bunny
is stressed. Yes, sometimes it’s stress
  that puts the Bunny
before the vet. When the vet
gets Bunny, she

pets it to calm
Bunny. Then Bunny
commits what we call
         “relinquishing”: it moves to a corner
and gives us treats.

In order not to
fall urgently in aww-cuteness
with such a creature, we allow the vet
out of the corner. This may be
disconcerting, as you’d imagine.

Hence, Bunny is
sometimes stressed, and rightfully
so. Urine kits, or “strips” as we say
         in decorative circles, display an eye-
ful to all who pray that Bunny

will not relinquish.

and if orange it waits

trucks like bric-a-brac moving
together and ripping down phone wires
neighbors and cats all out for a walk, that doesn’t
seem safe, one says, boarding a tractor
trailer through the drop-leaf

filled with mattresses, filling the bins
with recyclables, pigeons, extras, crumbs
from within the bakery of Portuguese portraits
of scones, quiet frilled with motors,
kinship, departures sudden

at five, taking her on the train to the airport
who will never return, a soft blue velvety
chair you could spin around, loaded on a compact
car below the cable, sound of
trucks changing their minds

Amanda Katz is a writer, editor, translator, and critic who has lived in New York, Boston, Providence, San Francisco, and Paris. She recently received her MFA in poetry from Brown University. Her poetry and translations have appeared in publications including EOAGH, Aufgabe, and The Germ.