which comes to mind each time
I see them kiss a dog on the mouth.
N
A dog’s mouth is cleaner than a human’s
only because our best friends cannot say
the things acquaintances do about us.
Yesterday the choice word was infestation;
today it will be something else because it has to be
for things to carry on normatively.
N
That used to mean a house in the suburbs,
a trimmed lawn and picket fence, two children
and a hyperactive puppy to toss the frisbee to;
that used to mean people tensed up when the
moving vans came barreling down the block. It still does.
N
But, anyway, I really do love myself a pooch,
have kept two such companions thus far in life.
The first of them slept in a cage at night,
the second only had to slip past an electric fence.
What I’m saying is that I’ve evolved on the issue of incarceration.
N
An animal with a given name isn’t an animal anymore.
N
I recall his body lying in the street for hours,
like a dehydrated dog resting on its side,
panting. Except
there was no panting anymore, his lungs deflated like unused footballs.
N
My chest rises and falls faster the more I anger.
My blood carries narrative.
I hear whistles most days that it seems my neighbors can’t.
My parents gave me a name out of love.
N
They’re animals anyway, so let them lose their souls,
said the Sicilian crime boss in a movie I adore.
All it takes is a little provocation and the teeth are prone.
I’m talking about dogs here.
Nothing will love a man better or be more steadfast.
I love hard, but I need to love harder.
N
In Latin, Homo sapiens means wise man.
I am what I am, think and therefore.
N
I recognize the games being played on the big board:
putting people in cages, changing names to numeric codes.
People don’t talk about that as much
as they talk about their pets, I find.
N
We give dogs the bones we’d prefer to be buried.
N
The first human remains were actually found in Africa,
dated back hundreds of thousands of years.
Just the other day, somebody told me to go back there
as if I could do so without taking them with me.
Into me. Into tenderness.
N
I wait by the door for them to return
before the streetlights flicker alive.
