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Companion Animals
In My Good Death
I will find myself waist deep in high summer grass. The humming / shock of the golden light. And I will hear them before I see / them and know right away who is bounding across the field to meet / me. All my good dogs will come then
October 2010The World In Red
Floreta Cook buried her husband, Cookie, in the Questa Cemetery in New Mexico. It was a good cemetery. Cookie had always admired it. He liked the sign on the gate saying to watch out for snakes, and the cemetery grounds were bright with wreaths and saints. Cookie had believed in all the saints and gods and had seen patterns everywhere. To Floreta life was chaos, apocalypse probably just around the corner.
September 2010
Selected Poems
— from “The Second Letter of Lazarus to His Sisters” | Beloveds, I don’t think we are quite communicating clearly here. / What I said was that I think there are two sides to every miracle
August 2010July 2010
I admit it: My memory isn’t what it used to be. I forgot what number we’re supposed to dial when we see the Supreme Court leaving the scene of a crime — for what else to call yesterday’s 5–4 decision to kill campaign-finance reform?
July 2010Three Days Before My Mother’s Birthday
I run into a young woman almost staggering across / the street. I’m surprised to see it’s someone I / know. She seems pale.
May 2010The Bird At The Window
My mother’s pet pigeon, Birdy-Bird, is sitting outside the kitchen window on the ledge, pecking on the glass: tick-TICK-tick, tick-TICK-tick, tick-TICK-tick. This is his way of communicating that he wants to be let in. Now.
January 2010
The Dog, In The Presence Of Wolves
How fallen from them, their blood-matted fur, / eyes urine yellow and live with knowledge.
December 2009June 2009
The morning light makes promises it has no intention of keeping, but why quibble? Look how it shines on my aging face and my fading to-do list. Look how it caresses my wife of twenty-five years. As if darkness has been banished. As if everything is lit from within.
June 2009Rayleen And R.L. Bury Their Luck
My wife, Rayleen, got it into her head that our luck died with our dog, Buddy. “We buried it in a hole in the ground” is how she put it.
April 2009
Bananacake
We bought our rabbit seven years ago from a Frenchwoman named Daphne who owned the Country Inn restaurant on Route 28. Daphne bred two types of rabbits: those for soup, and those for pets. Violet chose ours from the pet bin: a white female with gray “points,” meaning its ears, paws, and tail were gray. The rabbit was four months old and seven inches long.
February 2009
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