Brindle coat like a tiger, bouncing ears like swine, an elf, your face
at 13 years old has grown white like a Madagascarian lemur, none of you
is the fighting wretch they told me you were. When I brush you,
your hair flies like a hoard of locusts
in the air of our apartment, my sneezing startles you.
I find new lumps on your chest, your neck, your head
of dander, my kisses land there. I begin with the short-haired comb, then
the curry comb, then the boar’s brush to spread
the oils so your skin — a landscape of little hills
and dermatological stumps — doesn’t dry. On your left eye
an ever-bleeding wart, you whinny and snort like a thoroughbred horse,
trot and prance on the concrete searching for trash. When you sit
your hind legs are magnificent
like a sphynx. Black eyes inside them a man’s soul. Clouds
in your pupils, your chest like pure white cotton, linen thrown
in the grass and mud, your teeth a mangled mess,
o fifty-six pound, snow-footed beast with ever-growing claws
that scrape on the tar of our neighborhood, its enchanting
strangers, their legs to sniff. Your adorers. You don’t know the difference
between this block and that. Blight from the manicured
three-story homes of fence vines and front-yard sculptures.
Just its smells, prowling into the hedges where you don’t belong, your teeth a mangled mess,
lunging at the other leashed dogs. Your family
contains Shih-Tzus, Havanese, soft and groomed.
you a goose among prize ducklings. You wake every five minutes
from your curled-body naps on the couch, stare longingly over your shoulder
at me. You pule and grumble like a bored child, something along the lines of outside
or food, stomping your little feet, your tail in a semi-circled path
like an infant’s first crayon. When we do venture,
your nose like coal, obsidian, is to the ground
like an anteater, a scapegrace. Sometimes I’m not quick enough
when you snatch fried chicken skin or bones,
then throw them up a day later, and yet I feed you
like a king of beasts: salmon oils, joint supplements,
kibble and beef-flavored wet food, pressure-cooked
chicken breast, Greenies, I will give it to you willingly like a servant. I pick up your shit
and hose piss off your front legs when you aim poorly. hold you
like a toddler and buy you sweaters. I rub my face into your snout,
that wet nose, wherever it’s been, because I can’t help it.
o bourgeois idiots I pass on our walks with their $5,000 purebreds
they have no idea what they’re missing. With you
every day is gentle, kind like a secret
I stumbled upon in the dirt. Pristine
and overlooked treasure. Effigy
of the carnivorous, war chief of the benign,
creature key to a whole life, master
and teacher of the unconditional love that we,
the companions feigning to be the evolved species,
would never learn on our own.
POETRY FESTIVAL. Submit to site for FREE. Submit for actor performance. Submit poem to be made into film. 