2025 Commended poem: 'Tumbril' by Michelle Lovric

Tumbril

The cats are dying. Have you noticed how the cats are dying?
They used to last for ages; now they’re on fast-forward,
dying, as they never lived, in herd formation.

It’s as if the dogs got to say,
put them all on the tumbril and slap the horse,
then cancer and kidneys carried those cats away.

I remember when a cat used to last a whole marriage.
But now their lives are short affairs, weighted at the end
so you remember most the pinched gait, the night-bawls.

The cats are dying faster than they used to: my memory’s
become a crypt of cats, this poem an archive or an urn.

When I was young, there were cats who’d see you through
from lullaby to Hip-Hop. Now, you get a kitten and the sadness
starts unfolding promptly in the middle distance.

The cat vacates the cushion; a warm hollow forbodes her ghost.
You rehearse the final caress; you mourn, you collect shed whiskers,
You know just the place in the garden.

Where did they go, those cats who came to tell you all that was
supple, soft and lazy in the loving? Gone too, the cats of mornings glistening
in a slant of sunlight, who knew the night’s splendour, and the hunt.

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Dead Cat Poetry Prize - winners and commendees, 2025

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Michelle Lovric is a novelist, poet and environmental campaigner. Her new novel, The Puffin, will be published by Salt in 2026. You can follow Michelle on Instagram