The dogs tipped the garbage and the meat spilled out
the larger dog sniffed it
the smaller stood to the side and growled
the meat quivered on the floor
I’d kept it too long it was
slick and fat it had expired
all this while I stood in line
and then the ballot machine glowed greenly
yes yes yes I told it
while the large dog licked the meat
lifted it gingerly with its mouth
dropped it wetly to the floor
How they tumbled down the snow-filled streets,
how they slept in battered vending boxes
and hung from dowels in the public library.
How my father kept the memorable ones in his closet,
among the dying shoes.
Then the power went out. The TV closed its eye
and the house felt strange in the new silence:
a hush of snowstorm.
A poem in translation,
the young man was fond of saying,
is like the dead body of a foreigner
Thinking to have their fun, those boys
set a match to the kerosene-soaked
rabbit
Only his old dog recognized him when,
after twenty years,
Odysseus returned to Ithaka.
How much the colonel loved his granddaughters
you will never know.
Their laughter filled his black Mercedes
In 1981
in a hotel gift shop outside Phoenix, AZ,
a little girl stood by the postcard rack, turning it gently.
A baby’s head is fragile,
pale as an egg and thin.
Hit the brakes