In honor of my buddy Jon losing his dog as well as the dogs that I wrote this poem for, I am reposting it on this blog. This poem actually netted me the 1999 BGSU Alumni Award for Poetry.



Dogs in Pain

She looks like something poured,
melting and dribbling into every
room, back legs shaking, it could break
your goddamn heart, it could
make your mouth unhinge,
lock your neck in a coronary floor gaze,
the way she creaks and revolves around the blanket
reminds me of the Earth and me slow circling,
dancing around ourselves every twenty-three hours
and fifty-six minutes. She looks at me
like I’m tossing paper wads through invisible flame,
praying for an incinerated resolution.

If the old girl could talk she’d say, “The length of
a television commercial is the right time to die, you spend
your whole life preparing for one minute and television
commercials are only resurrected for a short time.” I want
to lay down next to her but I’m already there,
the circle she hurts inside, a fleshy gill that breathes
in our head, makes our lives unhinge, tongues hang out,
blessings cut themselves short. Every day
some dream we prepare for, some fence rusts.
Pace in a circle and the ground opens up.
Dig for things to make us humans again.

©1999 Joshua Minton