1.

Tiger once fell down the abandoned and walled-off well in our basement. Or so I believed. I begged Dad to save him. But he just said in his mysterious Dad way, “He’ll come back. Cats always do. Don’t worry.” Mom didn’t say anything.

After that, when Mom did the wash in the round-tubbed washing machine with the roller thing that flattened out the clothes, I followed behind her and went over to where an old armoire blocked off access to the well. I could see the dark pit behind it if I leaned down and looked underneath its fat legs. I kneeled there calling, “Tiger! Tiger! Please don’t be dead,” for days.

Then one day there he was, sitting on the kitchen floor licking his hind leg and looking very contented with himself.

tigers in the wild hunt 

slowly carefully 
eyes open in slits, ears 

perked for even larger predators 
more deadly, devious & smart 
hiding their scent for the kill 

2.

When the weather was nice, we’d sit after dinner on the stoop in front of our house with Tiger in our laps. Dad would cross the street to buy popcorn from the stand on the other side. They popped the kernels fresh like in the movie theater, and it was always hot and salty, just the way we all liked it in those days.

We’d toss popcorn to the cat who expertly caught every kernel making the whole family laugh. The family was me, Mom and Dad, and my little brother, Glenn, who was only four but my best friend and partner in childhood hijinks. I was six and cute in pigtails. That summer Glenn still looked healthy and only Mom and Dad knew there was no cure for the leukemia coursing through his young veins.

now predators roam freely 

down city streets, through 
unsuspecting vessels 

life giving blood now 
coal in the mine of the body 
the collapsed tunnel of certain death 

Dotty LeMieux

writes both poetry and poetic memoir. She has five chapbooks published, including two during the pandemic: Viruses, Guns and War (Main Street Rag, 2023) and Henceforth I Ask Not Good Fortune (Finishing Line Press, 2021). Her writing has appeared in numerous print and online journals such as Gyroscope, MacQueen’s Quinterly, The Poeming Pigeon, Poets Reading the News, Rise Up Review, and Writers Resist, among others.

MacQueen’s Quinterly nominated her CNF Spring Trip to Mazatlán for Best of the Net 2024.