MAN PRAYER BEFORE by JESSIE MCCARTY
August 15 2025
Imposter
syndrome
goes back
ages. I was a
woman
distracted at
all costs.
Consider now
we have two
cats. Same
age, same
hair, same
big eyes. One
small, one
large. Grey,
black. Two
rows scratch
the couch,
ripping holes
in the fabric,
sounds more
like a squeak
than meow,
reaching the
ends of our
fingers where
we lay our tips
to our noses.
A blessing can
be anyone
with eyes to
see.
Jessie McCarty is a Southern, Irish-American cataloger/writer in Chicago. They have been published in Sarka, The Minnesota Review, The Documentarian, Don’t Submit Lit, Thick Press, and more. They write the newsletter Poetic Classifications on Substack.
https://www.jessiemccarty.com/