We Clean After We Eat

We clean after we eat
or our beans won’t pad
or our fur won’t sleek
or our tail won’t tell quite so well

We clean after we eat
or our ears won’t watch behind our backs

We clean after we eat
(and for a good part of the day)
or our comfort won’t nap
or our biscuits won’t knead
or our curly won’t belly-up and sleep

We clean after we eat
or our stealth itself might relax
and unkempt lines might give us away
and our stealth is our strong
To not clean after we eat
would be certainly wrong

So we clean after we eat
(between murderous dreams)
Clean, clean, clean, clean, clean

Many thanks to the editors of Ambrosia Zine for including this, and a couple other of my poems in their ANIMAL issue! Ambrosia Zine is not online, but you can find them on instagram @ambrosiazine if you’re into that sort of thing.