Cherie Hunter Day

Pussycat, pussycat, I love you. Yes, I do…

My step-uncle showed up on Boxing Day three sheets to the wind—booze in one hand and an unwrapped stuffed animal in the other. Thrusting the creature at me he mumbled, “Got you a purple pushy cat.” I remember the lime-green plastic reflector eyes were stuck on with globs of hot glue.

new cigarette burns on the armchair’s arms

In high school my friends and I discovered his stash: the Smirnoff bottles beneath the kitchen sink behind a baffle of Armstrong cleaner and his beer reserves in the dank spruce woods behind the garage. Six packs of Bud lay harnessed together under a dozen trees. The crushed and partially buried cans he called his “dead soldiers.” They shone far-off like a destination.      

Polaroids of me
in my first bikini—
the tilted horizon

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About the Author

Cherie Hunter Day has written and published haibun since 2000. Her haibun “In Rumble Dark” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. Recent collections include a prose poem e-chapbook, Qualia (White Knuckle Press, 2017), and a collection of micro poems, for Want (Ornithopter Press, 2017). She lives in northern California among some thirsty redwoods.