sorry
The dog isn’t sorry again, isn’t very sorry
for eating the cat food one more time.
Palm Sunday. The reed pokes through my pocket:
fading hieroglyphs on my thigh.
This is a poem with a horse in it:
A poem with a dog torso, horse-like at least.
He is statue-still, my pieta.
(Someone else get the crying baby.)
The dog’s sadness: dog sorrow collects.
Someone else take the baby just once.
I force dog tears and fold on the twin bed.
Dogs, a whole poem of them.
Of sleeping in my skin. Hurting about nothing.
The fur generating. The fur generating what.
My fur machine that forgives.
There are moments I can’t go back to
that no one else would care to remember:
the ham sandwich I didn’t accept,
the dog in the hot car when I didn’t know.
If I had any second thoughts on grief
then this would be an illustration.
I like the fluorescent under-painting
because it looks like us, neon inside
if you peel our skin off, see.
This dog body all apology.
Don’t be so afraid. There is no tiger.
There is no tiger.
Mothers in their houses shush their babies at last.
Sometimes I stop because it’s time to stop
but usually I stop because I’m afraid.
