Hangdog
 
I tried to make alive this half-dead dog,
the one that’s always trailing me to the end
of the street. He’s a mastiff type, the kind
with a jowl that leaks and a world-weary look
in his eyes, eyes which roll white and stay fixed on me.
Sometimes I can feel his breath on my cheek
as I try to sleep. It smells like fish and disease,
one low snarl away from a bite to the head
or the arm or the neck. My head the dog likes best.
I think he’d like it served warm on a plate.
He’d crunch his way through the bone and the flesh
until there was nothing left but the small stone
of a peach, that hard kernel of me he couldn’t reach.
 
I shake him off in the dark, draw the sheets close
over my nose, not needing the grease of him,
the way he slips in, clings to the air –
how loyal he is, my shameful old prince.

May Grier


If you have any thoughts about this poem, May Grier  would like to hear them.