News from the Neighborhood

Those sad grass plots in front of every house
go dormant in August but this year all
seem flat-out dead. Swaths of dried brown patches
burned with heat and lack and the spicy urine
of drunk boys stumbling past on late nights
stuffed with bucket beer and hot wings dipped
in oily pools of Hell’s Half Acre. Root structures
tangle. After all, the block’s a mix of old
and new and you never know what will return.
My cat came back. He was locked up for months
down the street by a woman in a house with
all-white furniture, white carpets, and bleached
gravel for a lawn. She wouldn’t let him go.
Turns out you can’t steal a dog in this town
but you can commandeer a cat. There are no
laws, no rules for cats. Because a cat knows
how to read a room. So, when my cat escaped
again and Crazy Cat Thief tried to lure him back
with canned salmon and an open door, he dragged
a bleeding baby bunny through her all-white
house and just like magic, he was mine again.
I’ve heard how grasses speak a language
underground, share tips and warnings with
the shrubs and street trees, though no translation’s
needed for the lines they’ve scrawled about us
in this hard, dry, pissed-in soil. I whisper to them:
sleep. Sleep and wait for better times. Then choose
your moment like a cat. The spring will come.

Celebratory Note

“News from the Neighborhood” is both bitingly mischievous and beautifully crafted. The poem’s story might or might not be true, but it feels true, and I found myself hoping it was true. All too often mean people do mean things with impunity, but “News of the Neighborhood” is a poem of comeuppance. Though the crime is not unforgivable, it was meanspirited, and I took real pleasure in the poetic justice served.

—Tim Seibles, 2025 judge of the Graybeal-Gowen Prize