Animal Appetites

In the dream a cougar slinks

along a street blotted by gray

suburban light. Alone she slides

through this strange watercolor

with bricks of hunger in her gut

like sifted fog or muted

death, hunting nighttime’s

kindly cover, hidden barely

from shrieks and bullets,

those shivers of human

taunting.

Perhaps, she wonders. there’s still

hope for sniffing

a smitten lover drunk and

stumbling housewards,

to taste that flesh, then rip into….