extracts from dog
4.
Dog is an amateur astronomer, I feign interest,
he dictates the curvature of the Earth.
He had me measure the world on his back,
the radius seemed bent as dog’s spine.
That’s how we know the Earth is round,
inhabited by rooms of beautiful evenings.
6.
Dog has a degree in nothingness, he has you focus
on an empty space and you can picture a theatre
of overcome flesh in a reflection of distant clouds,
or a Remembrance Sunday, whatever’s in your little
hideous button eyes. “And it shall be crossed off
your last judgment” dog oohed, his eye magnified
by his half sucked glacier mint crystal ball.
7.
We’re busy from town to town, we’ve even thought
of buying a gypsy caravan to carry all our gifts,
handed in bunches from grateful villagers.
Dog’s gifts receipts include: a little patience in a tinted
light bulb, a room that has the outside in,
a collar that calls your attention to coincidence,
an honest man holding a box in each hand
and a donkey (deceased) stuffed with captivated children.
8.
The exact weight of dog’s body was reproduced
as an ebony table, his trembling copse of crow-black fur
seemed tireless in this anatomic facsimile, his glasses
we’re fashioned as fathomless pale blue lanterns
iridescently animating the children’s cartoons on sick days.
“Dog, phantom of heaven, how would you like your feet set?”
the artist asked dog. “Standing up!” bellowed dog.
9.
Dog says that we can have bus fare if I eat my greens.
I isolate the carnation on my plate and pick at the stem
as the crows in the field suck their breath into their necks.
10.
Evenings, after supper, were spent with dog doing
his disappointing impressions. His Stanley Baldwin
sounded like a retching Quasimodo. Later he’d read
a story of his own devising, starting off with his whistling
his forgetting tune… “A dog and his man were surrounded
by forests of pine. Man was playing with noise to see,
dog’s pink nostrils trembled the white slab of heaven
as the moulted earth revealed its golden arteries.
This is the whereabouts where we come to place gratitude,
this is the wherefores where we come to say the only sadness
is not to live a mystery, this is the compass where we come
to scream our lungs out how strange it is to be anything at all.
This is the hamlet where it rains Horatio’s, this is the place we taste,
lit peacefully as a bright flower, this is the place we call home.”
Grant Tarbard is an editorial assistant for Three Drops From A Cauldron and a reviewer. His most recent collection is Rosary of Ghosts (Indigo Dreams). dog is forthcoming from Gatehouse Press.