Three Poems, by Sam Schmidt

The Coelacanth Situation

The coelacanth was believed

extinct until 1938 when one

was caught by fishermen.

You had vowed never to date

extinct members of the order

coelacanthaformes. You studied me,

awkwardly bracketed among other

marine cartilaginous fishes

in your textbook of paleontology.

It was terrible being flat,

an artist’s reconstruction. I wanted

to lean out of those pages, kiss

your lips, your long lashes, your

endearing faith in science. We were

two ships, you and I, or one ship and one

fish, missing each other by only

90 million years. You think

being extinct was easy? You

have no idea! The mating

opportunities missed. The pain

in the chest without the breath

of life, the sense that I would burst

forever. Fish don’t breathe,

you point out. You have gills… Don’t

interrupt. I’ve been miscategorized, mis-

construed from the very beginning,

and I say, that one dazzling

dawn off the coast of Africa,

I erupted from the silence

of myth. I opened my mouth, and even

though it’s not anatomically possible,

I breathed, my dear, I breathed.

The Machinery of Renewal

People had stopped,

in the middle of deploying

umbrellas, of pulling on shoes.

They were tired. The world

was made of pasteboard. Something

was growing wonky

at the edges. Like

the happiness of that couple

on the tandem bicycle:

it wasn’t real. They

were a Potemkin couple, stuck

to a Potemkin world. Until

the pig. Just call her Stella. How

had she come back, squatting

in our midst, squealing

for slop? The umbrellas

opened. The pasteboard

crumbled as actual

individuals stepped

out of it into their lives.

The man on the bicycle presses

down hard on one pedal.

The woman holds onto her hat.

The Blind Cat

When they set him down in my apartment

the blind cat walked until

his nose bumped some wall.

The blind cat startled, surprised

that walls existed.

As if in his dark he saw

vast even days of travel

over floors, impeded only

by smoked herring, fresh

water in porcelain bowls.

Reluctantly he turned,

walked again until

he bumped another wall

or desk or stationary bicycle.

Like a prisoner pacing his cell,

he startled just like before;

he turned again; he always

did this slowly, halfway

stumbling backwards.

Or after a few days,

he’d stop

inches before the wall.

And it was uncanny!

Like he was thinking about Euripides.

That passage in his play, Hippolytus,

where his stepmother Phaedra

hangs herself but leaves

a message accusing him

of doing it to her, opening her garments,

holding her down on his father's

bed, again and again!

But none of this was true. She

was the one who wanted him!

It was that bitch Aphrodite who drove her

to it, inflamed her with unlawful desire,

Aphrodite who hated Hippolytus because

he worshipped Artemis, goddess

of chastity. He hated women.

So the cat knew his Euripides. It was not

a good enough reason for taking him in. I blamed

myself. I was too kind-hearted—

And those friends of friends who were giving

him up. They were young and popular.

I wanted them to like me.

After a few weeks, the blind cat learned

to jump onto my bed, having until then

been confined to the horizontal.

He would raise front paws

unevenly into the air, and it was amazing!

Like he was Hippolytus, begging his father

(who you know was Theseus) for mercy,

saying I have never done this thing

of which you think to convict me Father.

I am a virgin to this day.

And then he leaps onto my bed.

Once, you know, could have been

a coincidence, I could have been

mistaken; it could have been

the Racine play on the same

subject he was remembering;

but then, a few nights later, I awaken as the Gods

strike him with a tremendous seizure:

Limbs jerk and flail. For almost

a half hour he lost

all control of his enormous bladder;

he lay there, spent upon his pee.

And from his shattered bulk there came,

from this blind and neurologically

deficient, in some sense epileptic

cat, until that moment silent, three long

and piteous cries. It was unbelievable!

The best performance I had ever witnessed

of that scene where Theseus cries, Alas!

on learning his son was innocent.

I gathered that pee-soaked cat into my arms.

I gazed in those unseeing eyes.

Euripides? I said. Euripides?

Sam Schmidt became a poet upon encountering the work of Walt Whitman in high school. In addition to Whitman, he loves poets and writers in the Western canon such as John Keats, Charles Baudelaire, Gerard de Nerval, and Wallace Stevens. He likes the work of Sharon Olds regardless of whether it is true or not, and he likes Billy Collins because his work is accessible. He thinks that if baseball can attract a mass audience, for heaven's sake, then why not poetry? It is high time he had a book of his work published.