February

BY MARGARET ATWOOD
Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
to get onto my head. It’s his
way of telling whether or not I’m dead.
If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am
He’ll think of something. He settles
on my chest, breathing his breath
of burped-up meat and musty sofas,
purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,
not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,
declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,
which are what will finish us off
in the long run. Some cat owners around here
should snip a few testicles. If we wise
hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,
or eat our young, like sharks.
But it’s love that does us in. Over and over
again, He shoots, he scores! and famine
crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing
eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits
thirty below, and pollution pours
out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You’re the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.

Here we have another piece that portrays the negatives of winter. This poem is written in a different

style than the other poems, as it is very blunt and does not rhyme. There are a variety of different

images that are portrayed within the story, which I really liked.

What I thought was more interesting, however, was the fact that there was much to take out of the

poem. This was the most abstract that I have yet to encounter. I like poems that make you think..

and here’s one where the reader has to review it over and over again.

The ending, however, is pleasing to me as it ties in the whole theme of the story. That is, it

characterizes winter as death and hopes for a new season.