Tag: dogs

Two Poems by Betsy Mars

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Gone to the Dogs

My body riddled with dot-to-dot
blood bursting through the thinning skin,
already a map of bruises on my shins
from who knows where. My scalp now visible
with all its lumps and bumps
formerly hidden beneath the glory of my hair—
the hair I once saw as a misbehaving dog
scampering here and there. My fingers locked,
unable to grip—who will open my jars,
write my words when my hands begin to slip?
Feet flattened by too much weight,
bones bulging where they don’t belong,
metatarsals over-marched. Who will piggyback
me when I can no longer walk and I slump
benignly in my bed? When my wants
are few and my needs are many, who
will diaper me, spoon me soft food
between my toothless gums, read me a story,
carry me through my second infancy?

* 

Density

My feet, strapped at an awkward slant,
make a triangle with the base of the exam table,
childbearing hips flat, scanned
as the machine shoots its x beams at my bones.
I imagine my brain in full swing: osteoporosis
of the mind, gray matter crumbling, the spine
of my brain leaking essentials: fluids, sanity.
The cheap construction I built swept away
on a tide of shame, desiccated hope,
structural failure, vanity.

*

Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, photographer, and assistant editor at Gyroscope Review. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals and anthologies. Recent poems can be found in Minyan, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Sheila-Na-Gig, and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. Her photos have appeared online and in print, including one which served as the Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge prompt in 2019. She has two books, Alinea, and her most recent, co-written with Alan Walowitz, In the Muddle of the Night. In addition, she also frequently collaborates with San Diego artist Judith Christensen, most recently on an installation entitled “Mapping Our Future Selves.”

Two Poems by Rachel Marie Patterson

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Stonetown Road

Sunday, black coffee and
rectangles of dishwasher soap.
We get the call at 10:30—
my mother-in-law fell hard
on the kitchen floor.
So we race two hours north
to find her in a mechanical bed,
two staples in her head,
asking every nurse to take her
for a cigarette. When I ask,
she can’t remember whether
she chewed the aspirin.
Outside the security glass,
a hawk surveys the embankment.
The night we met, I howled
with laughter as she gripped
my sleeve with a gauzy, manicured
hand. Her eyes were as clear
as the lake behind us. How
my husband gushed and beamed.
His mother used to write cards
and keep appointments, before
her pretty cursive looped away
to oblivion. In the ICU, he leans
to kiss her bloody forehead.
I know now I will watch him
lose her, slowly. Driving back,
we pass his childhood home–
the natural pool full of snakes.

*

Emergency Vet

When the dog stops blinking, I wrap
her in a towel and swerve the highway,
one palm cupping her distended bowel.
In the cement waiting room, black
coffee in a styrofoam cup. I stare
at the framed canine dental chart
while they thread the catheter and split
her open. Remember how she ate tissues
from the trash because they were mine,
wore circles into my bedroom carpet.
For 13 years, she followed me
from home to home, licking the salt
from my eyes. Now, there is nothing
to do but leave her.

*

Rachel Marie Patterson is the co-founder and editor of Radar Poetry. She holds an MFA from UNC Greensboro. Her poems appear in Cimarron Review, Harpur Palate, New Plains Review, The Journal, Thrush, Parcel Magazine, Smartish Pace, and others. The winner of an Academy of American Poets Prize, her work has also been nominated for Best New Poets and Best of the Net. Her poem “Connemara” was a Special Mention for the Pushcart Prize in 2019. She is the author of Tall Grass With Violence (FutureCycle Press, 2022).

Three Poems by George Franklin

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Dog Years

Tomorrow, I’ll get up early to drive
The dog to the vet. He’s having the rest
Of his teeth removed. They’re decayed,
And he gets gum infections. He bleeds
From his mouth, and his breath smells like
Something that’s been dead for a while.
There’s a hernia too—none of it’s good.
Ximena asked what he’ll eat afterwards.
I told her “The same food. Dogs don’t
Really chew; they mostly swallow.”
This one, named after Joseph Brodsky, is
Nine years old, which for a collie is getting
Up there. The collie who slept in my
Room when I was growing up—or slept in
My parents’ room—only lived to be twelve.
I was away at a high-school debate workshop
When they called me to say they’d had him
“Put down.” I was speaking from a wooden
Phone booth at a college in Texas, and I
Remember the grain of the wood. We have
Lots of euphemisms about killing dogs. I
Think I hate every one of them. When the vet
Gave my doberman an injection that stopped
His heart, I was still young enough not to
Imagine myself like him, unable to walk,
A cancer growing down my spine. Now, it’s
All too easy to picture: the cold metal of
A raised examination table, the professionally
Sad look of the veterinarian as her syringe
Empties into my vein, maybe the distant
Sound of somebody crying, a receptionist
Mumbling under her breath, something
About the “rainbow bridge.”

*

Barcelona

Down the street, a dog is barking, and pigeons
Coo in reply, a low trill that celebrates the end
Of daylight, mares’ tails floating in from
The Mediterranean. Perhaps, in Mallorca,
A different set of pigeons are making the same
Sound, and a different dog is barking to be let inside.
Perhaps, the mares’ tails have floated there as well.
The courtyard is quiet this evening. A few voices,

But no one has started cooking dinner. I told
Ximena that we travel in the hope it will make us
Different, but I’m a bad tourist. Our friend Eduard
Showed us all the markets, the Hebrew inscription
In the Gothic Quarter, the recycled blocks of stone
From the Jewish graves on Montjuïc, the Roman walls
Of the old city, stone fountains empty from the drought.
In a narrow walkway in Raval, we passed

Bored prostitutes and junkies sniffing powder
Off the back of their hands. My feet and knees hurt
From walking, but I haven’t changed. We saw
The square that was bombed by Mussolini’s air force,
The shrapnel-torn walls, and the walls where
The ones who weren’t fascists stood to be shot.
Some of the bullet holes were too high, and
I wondered if one of the executioners had

A bad conscience and fired above the skulls
Of his targets. I want to think so, but I’m not
Sentimental enough to believe it. In one of
The apartments, an air conditioner or a washing
Machine has stopped, and it’s even quieter
Than before. Somewhere, water is draining
Down a pipe. Eduard also showed us the spot
On Rambla del Raval where a terrorist

Rammed his rented van into a crowd.
The van stopped on top of a Miró mosaic.
A few meters away, there’s a Botero sculpture
Of a cat. Still, I’m a bad tourist. I don’t know
What to make of what I see. The same dog
Continues to bark, and someone has put on
Some music I can barely hear. The sun has
Slipped behind the mountains.

*

There Was a Pine Tree

If I have faith, it’s that the world is sayable,
That I can find words for what I didn’t think could be said.
The weight of a stone fountain filled with clear water,
The sunlight that plunges through vacant clouds,
Thoughts that are just images, faces, words spoken
Without meaning, the way one room in a dream becomes
Another, how it resembles the room I slept in at my
Grandfather’s house, the deep red of the bricks,
The solidity of the white front door. There was a pine tree
In the front yard, and the sap thickened and dried
Between the shapeless tiles of bark, the smell of resin
That was left on my fingers, the infinity of acorns from
The live oak, the trunk that was older than anyone living
Who was not a tree. When my grandfather died, I didn’t
Know what to believe. When my parents died
Thirty years later, it wasn’t much different. I don’t have
The talent for belief. Their voices only come to me
In snippets, in crumbling pieces of tree bark, in the odor
Of pine or the feel of acorns rolling in my hand.

*

George Franklin is the author of seven poetry collections, including What the Angel Saw, What the Saint Refused, forthcoming this month from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. Individual poems have been published in SoFloPoJo, Another Chicago Magazine, Rattle, The Banyan Review, New York Quarterly, and Cultural Daily. He practices law in Miami, is a translation editor for Cagibi, teaches poetry workshops in Florida prisons, and co-translated, along with the author, Ximena Gómez’s Último día/Last Day. In 2023, he was the first prize winner of the W.B. Yeats Poetry Prize. His website: gsfranklin.com.

Two Poems by Anna M. Evans

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Piper Goes Blind Aged Eight

The new reality—our dog is blind—
has struck us like a rock thrown at a pane
of glass. We once saw clearly. Now we find
ourselves in darkness. We have got to train
her, fix the layout, keep things off the floor,
teach her words like left, right, up and down.
We miss the carefree pup she was before,
her countenance more bright-eyed smile than frown.
And yet, the vets have said that we will know
a different closeness with our little girl.
Her new reliance on us makes her curl
up closer, look much sadder when we go.
We’re patient with her, accept her need to fuss.
Our love is steadfast as her trust in us.

* 

Orion Blesses My Blind Dog

Now that my dog is blind, she often rises
unsteadily from the bed at four a.m.
and wanders, groggily crashing into things,
searching for an exit from the dark.

My job is to surface from my dream,
get up quickly, hustle into clothes,
and lead her, with my voice and finger snaps
down the stairs and out the kitchen door.

The night, then, is vast and otherworldly,
our footfalls crunching through the new-formed frost.
She scampers around, gratefully harvesting smells
as Orion looks on, clear and benevolent.

Afterward, she settles back in bed,
her little body warm against my own,
and I lie there, half-awake in the shadows,
dazzled by a love as pure as stars.

*

Anna M. Evans’ poems have appeared in the Harvard Review, Atlanta Review, Rattle, American Arts Quarterly, and 32 Poems. She gained her MFA from Bennington College. Recipient of Fellowships from the MacDowell Artists’ Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and winner of the 2012 Rattle Poetry Prize Readers’ Choice Award, she currently teaches poetry at West Windsor Art Center and English at Rowan College at Burlington County. Her books include her latest chapbooks, The Quarantina Chronicles (Barefoot Muse Press, 2020) and The Unacknowledged Legislator (Empty Chair Press, 2019), along with Under Dark Waters: Surviving the Titanic (Able Muse Press, 2018), and her sonnet collection, Sisters & Courtesans (White Violet Press, 2014). Her new collection, States of Grace, is forthcoming from Able Muse Press in the fall of 2024. She is the Board President of the Poetry by the Sea Conference, an annual 4-day conference which takes place in Madison, CT, and the editor of the online poetry journal for women formalists, Mezzo Cammin.

How to Bury Your Dog Using a Sonnet by Brian Duncan

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How to Bury Your Dog Using a Sonnet

Close your eyes, smell his fur for the last time,
clip a lock from his tail, tie it with yarn,
hang his faded blue collar by the door,
dig a hole under his black locust tree.

Feel the rough gray leather of his paw pads,
run your fingers over the half-moon scar,
from the broken bottle he stepped on in the pond,
fill the hole with bully sticks, balls, and surrender.

Flip his ear inside out, then back again,
lock the gate that leads to the trails out back,
pull the batteries from the GPS tracker,
plant sweet pepperbush all around.

Scrape the food dishes, empty the water bowl,
listen for echoes of nail clicks on tiles.

*

Brian Duncan lives in Kendall Park, New Jersey with his wife Margie and two cats. He worked in a virology laboratory at Princeton University for many years and is now happily retired. He enjoys devoting his time to poetry, gardening, and hiking. He has been writing poems for many years, but has only recently started submitting. He has a poem that will be coming out in the summer issue of Thimble.

Three Poems by Erin Murphy

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Ilha dos Gatos

The day my gynecologist
says postmenopausal the way

you’d mention rain, I learn
about Ilha dos Gatos

off the coast of Brazil,
an Alcatraz for abandoned cats—

feral, ravenous, spawning.
This is not a place for birds.

Desire is a noun and a verb
but never a command.

Look at me wanting
and wanting.

*

To the Man Who Stole Our Pregnant Dog

I hope she bit you, shredding the flesh
of the hand that wooed her from my childhood

yard. You probably sold her pups off the back
of a rusty truck at a flea market, a handwritten

sign missing an s or a t in Bassett Hound.
What I remember: her banana peel ears

swept the ground like unhemmed drapes.
We called her Blarney, and I’d already

named the babies after other Irish castles
from the set of pleather-bound Britannicas

we bought by the month. Every evening
for weeks, I sat in the bath after the water turned

cold, thinking my discomfort would bring her
home. The walls shuddered with the last

rumblings of my parents’ marriage. I slid
under to see how long I could go without air,

the soapy surface a scrim over a body
that was there, then not there.

*

I Knew a Pyromaniac

A neighborhood boy,
barely old enough to sit

at the kitchen table
without a booster seat.

He couldn’t tie his shoes
but lit a match with one

flick of a slim wrist.
He sniffed sulfur on his

fingers the way most kids
inhale the smell of warm

chocolate chip cookies.
His father was gone—

not dead, just gone. This
we shared. His mother

was the shadow of a shadow.
First a swing set burned.

Then a garden shed. And
then they moved. Once

when I was babysitting him,
he sat on my lap and drew

a picture of a girl. Who’s that?
I asked. He pointed.

You. I was on fire. He didn’t
know how to hold a crayon.

But he knew the hottest
part of the flame was blue.

*

Erin Murphy’s eighth book of poems, Human Resources, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Diode, Guesthouse, Southern Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, North American Review, and Women’s Studies Quarterly. Her awards include The Normal School Poetry Prize judged by Nick Flynn, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, and a Best of the Net award judged by Patricia Smith. She is editor of three anthologies from the University of Nebraska Press and SUNY Press and serves as Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review. She is Professor of English at Penn State Altoona. Website: http://www.erin-murphy.com

Cheering for the Dogs by Matt Dennison

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Cheering for the Dogs

While on my back roof covering
the tarp with a larger tarp to hide
its nails from the rain, I notice
the dogs in my neighbor’s yard
clawing at their fence—one board
knocked loose, they stick their heads
through and stare, excited to see
beyond, for beyond is always where
we dogs gaze when trapped in caves,
though some caves must be maintained
to allow a proper gazing point be framed.

*

Matt Dennison is the author of Kind Surgery, from Urtica Press (Fr.) and Waiting for Better, forthcoming from Main Street Rag Press. His work has appeared in Rattle, Bayou Magazine, Redivider, Natural Bridge, The Spoon River Poetry Review and Cider Press Review, among others. He has also made short films with Michael Dickes, Swoon, Marie Craven and Jutta Pryor.

Traveling Back by Barbara Sabol

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Traveling Back

On our nightly walks, my dog, Traveler,
will crane toward the occasional passing car,
studying each driver’s face, maybe searching

for his first master, the one who might have
taught him to lean full-bodied into love,
who conditioned in him a fierce loyalty.

Perhaps gone astray chasing a chipmunk
in the park or, slipping past a backyard gate,
he found himself irretrievably lost.

Rescued from the street two counties
and six years removed, my cherished companion
may believe, in the instinctive sensory wash

of canine thinking, that his first master
has all this time been driving everywhere,
still looking for him.

I was the family black sheep, declaring to the one
whose life was given over to my care,
I wish you weren’t my mother, with no thought

of my power to bruise. Knowing only the chafe
of that bond, I left with a one-way bus ticket
in my blue jean pocket. In the last years

of my mother’s life, I worked my way back,
fumbling with the intricacies of that knot,
frayed with time and distance, but still holding.

If one day some driver should stop, push open
the passenger door, call my dog by a name
that pricks up his ears, makes him shiver and whine

with joy, I wonder if I could release his leash,
let him leap into the car, and then with a resolve
hard as love, close the door behind him.

*

Barbara Sabol’s fourth collection, Imagine a Town, was awarded the 2019 Poetry Manuscript Prize from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. Her poetry has appeared widely in journals; most recently, Evening Street Review, Northern Appalachia Review, The Comstock Review, and Literary Accents, as well as in numerous anthologies. Her awards include an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council. Barbara lives in Akron, OH with her husband and wonder dogs.