More Short Poems with Dogs in Them

 

“The anthologist’s painstaking deliberations … are breezily overthrown by his audience’s desire for more short poems with dogs in them”

            ~David Orr~

from the introduction to The McSweeney’s Book of Poet’s Picking Poets

Someone painted you

in my mind as a bulldog

I said “A what dog?”

He said “A bulldog!”

“Go Fuck Yourself” I whispered

through punctured muzzle,

mask of bitter smile.

Bitten by a mongrel when

            I was a girl, I

            cried easily then

and for years I knew to cross

            streets, even from pups.

            But somehow now I

uncross legs to be caught in

mouths warm with snarling.

            Is there any point

in denying it? I am

drawn to incision;

sex just the growling

before a rupture of flesh,

            the bell of old pain

            that echoes me back

through bones half gnawed, half known

to time unforgotten—

            I dig on all fours,

salivate, sniff out the girl I

            once was, that innocent...

            So Yes! A bulldog!

What else would I want? The horn

            of my past calls me

            to impalement, blood

in the moment of truth

            that carries me home.