TELEGRAM TO A WIFE WATCHING PLANET EARTH ON NETFLIX

GAZELLES SCALE SHEER
VERTICALS   STOP   BLACK RACERS
SNAG IGUANA HATCHLINGS   STOP
HUSBAND CLAMBERS HAND UP
THIGH   STOP   YOU FLINCH   STOP
YOU SHUDDER   STOP   YOU GO PUT
ON NIGHT CREAM
                                               END REPORT

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Shelly Stewart Cato holds an MFA from Sewanee School of Letters. She won the 2021 Nancy D. Hargrove Editors’ Prize for Poetry and was a finalist for Rattle’s 2020 Poetry Prize. Work is forthcoming in Poet Lore, Washington Square Review, and New Ohio Review. She writes near the Warrior River in Walker County, Alabama. She is passionate about genre bending and short forms, blurring lines between truth and imagination.