Dry Dog Poem by Luke J. Holt

watch me who leers at thee who pouches prey
with my tongue twixt the teeth that chew your feeble ropes
like a sandy feather, dry, as the arid bones a-bleached of my father the wolf and his father the Tertiary hunter of the snowy hide and den in tendrils.
the drenched and torpid harriers have made angels of your spotted phantoms
sick with the lonely in whom i sit sole at the arch of a dusty rainbow in the floor
where we had waited to be chosen
lifted thoust all had been
skin lofty with the touch of a specific other
an OTHERness
a FARTHERness
a new away
a distant here
a fragrant silken bed of threads
to trap and cradle dizzy heads

i am the dry dog who reads Plato s Symposium to my empty saucer
hoping it will return to my belly, full, and make me entire once more
as there is no she-wolf to draw for warmth beside me
and verily there surely be no hope to soak
for such a parched and searching mongrel
who swallowed sharpened stars to cut his bony cloak