White Wolf
There are dogs going mad after a few
days in kennel rows. Rottweilers
mostly, we give them three days tops
until restless kennel legs
jump them in circles, barge
torsos at rusted pen doors. Their anemic lips
snarl at offers to play outside
and we say time up—fearing wet jaws.
She’s the same and we name her Suisse, purebred
Blanc Berger, white and striking, unspayed. Snow
ushers her in because she isn’t good
with children, has a slight food aggression problem,
though we hold her for breed’s rescue. I chaperone
her in our courtyard and she runs me
like a slave, growling when I escort her indoors.
If other dogs are brought to play, a flash of teeth.
The diva dog won’t let me pet or touch her ivory?
bristled coat when I slip the braided
blue lead onto her neck, noticing as she
prances back to her cell
the gleam of her yellow eye, the way
wet soil rises up ivory legs.
Take Me to Wherever They Live
Dreaming, my body calls to go back, step
over the pane, double-glass doors into blurry
kennels, trails longer than I remember, dogs
huddled and shaking on cotton blankets, noses
slashing under iron gates to grab air.
None rise, bow, speak. No eyes blazing, but
the unlit seam where lids kiss goodnight. I prayed for this
stillness, thanked god for silence—how it could shatter
at once, Tina, Joshua, Molly lifting dark bodies,
dumping them over deep-freezer lips
where they’d loll until shipped to Noah’s Garden,
a crematorium, spading cinder in stock graves.
How the forsaken animals’ carmine silhouettes hung
from gypsum ceiling, knocked against our brows,
and afterward, in our watered-down room, how
we regained silence, the dog's or cat's
silent ebony eyes, blank and deep as
oceans of black pearl we ushered them to.
Like beads connecting all along the white
wall, and we the unquiet rustling a garbage bag, snapping
it out to test the ear. Yes, we’re still waiting
to revisit at night, the immutable scrolls we inked, stacked
neatly on shelves, each name locked, a chain-
link door. Bolted, we’re praying for silence, not
to meet each other in this
neighborhood. What are you doing here?
I say, Take me to wherever they live.
