I am only posting this because my Microsoft Word keeps deleting it and then undeleting it and its only this poem and I dont know why but I need it in some permanent place like the internet so okay.
Sometimes it’s as if
your backbone is only
pretending, a sham of this
breaking canine body slumped
in front of me. Your knees, too,
seem lazy and hateful.
Your chest plate pops in
and back out and aches.
Your pelvis is always wrecking itself
before it ever has time
for checking itself.
Sometimes it’s as if
your underbelly is grappling
with the floor, to the death—
bloody Dog: I know it’s not
your blood, you look so
fierce and tired but it was
dead. Dead for hours
before you even smelled
its oily feathers.
Remember that time
you found the baby chick?
No, old girl, you are
a goddamn dog and don’t
remember much.
You held her in your mouth
and didn’t bite down
and let us take her out
and put her back.
We thought you were sweet.
Not now.
Not even those beautiful
black jowls of grace
could ignore the already bitten,
could resist the terrible heart of a pigeon
which was trapped in the basement
for days, flapping its heart
like a mad man before giving away
into sticky desire,
into heat and steam—
your heartiest meal,
a leak of want
that sets the house on fire.
