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Our mascot was the bulldog. Bulldogs chased me across playgrounds until I dreamed them. In class, I finished mazes with a green crayon. Hedges grew skyward from pages, and I ran. My dad once called this kind of thing my day-head. When my day-head happened, they called him at his office. I learned the name Daedalus from an article I read for science class. It meant a plane with leg-powered wings — carbon tubing, plastic skin. A man with a long name flew a longer way across the sea from Crete. At recess, I reread the same book of illustrated myths and cryptids. I dreamed of bulldogs with bulls’ heads. My day-head was a zoo where gods slept.Daedalus sounded like dad, so I loved him. Class was an enclosure made of cinder block and twelve weeks without winter. Behind the glass, my day-head paced. Daedalus was a zookeeper. I dreamed of a god with a bull’s body and a hood sewn from my face. The article said I weighed the same as the Daedalus. I traced flight plans and crash sites on my desk. My teacher asked us to draw self-portraits. The trees were hydras. On the paper, I drew an outline of my face. I cut my eyes out with scissors. They called me to the office, and Daedalus was waiting. I found a bulldog in a magazine and drew a maze inside each iris. We played tug-of-war in gym. My day-head was a knotted rope dangling from steel rafters. I pushed my thumb into the sun. I fell once. I cut the bulldog from the page, then ripped his head in two. I glued one half over the left side of my face. I left the right side blank. The article said the Daedalus crashed twenty-one feet from the black sand of a beach on Santorini. My day-head was a Kevlar fuselage belly-down in the sea. They called home. I ran home. On the right side of my face, I drew a sunny day. I signed my name.

Nose tucked under tail, you are a warm, furred planet centered in my bed. All night I orbit, tangle-limbed, in the slim space allotted to me. If I accidentally bump you from sleep, you shift, groan, drape your chin on my hip. O, that languid, movie-star drape! I can never resist it. Digging my fingers into your fur, kneading, I wonder: How do you dream? What do you adore? Why should your black silk ears feel like happiness? This is how it is with love. Once invited, it steps in gently, circles twice, and takes up as much space as you will give it.

Amongst dogs are listeners and singers. My big dog sang with me so purely, puckering her ruffled lips into an O, beginning with small, swallowing sounds like Coltrane musing, then rising to power and resonance, gulping air to continue— her passion and sense of flawless form— singing not with me, but for the art of dogs. We joined in many fine songs—"Stardust," "Naima," "The Trout," "My Rosary," "Perdido." She was a great master and died young, leaving me with unrelieved grief, her talents known to only a few. Now I have a small dog who does not sing, but listens with discernment, requiring skill and spirit in my falsetto voice. I sing her name and words of love andante, con brio, vivace, adagio. Sometimes she is so moved she turns to place a paw across her snout, closes her eyes, sighing like a girl I held and danced with years ago. But I am a pretender to dog music. The true strains rise only from the rich, red chambers of a canine heart, these melodies best when the moon is up, listeners and singers together or apart, beyond friendship and anger, far from any human imposter— ballads of long nights lifting to starlight, songs of bones, turds, conquests, hunts, smells, rankings, things settled long before our birth.

A stay of execution: one last day, your day, old Everydog, then, as they say, or as we say (a new trick to avoid finalities implicit in destroyed), you have to be put down, or put to sleep— the very dog who, once, would fight to keep from putting down, despite our shouts, a shoe until he gnawed it to the sole, and who would sit up, through our sleepless nights, to bark away some menace looming in the dark. Can you pick up the sense of all this talk? Or do you still just listen for a walk, or else, the ultimate reward, a car?— My God, tomorrow's ride . . . Well, here we are, right now. You stare at me and wag your tail. I stare back, dog-like, big and dumb. Words fail. No more commands, ignore my monologue, go wander off. Good dog. You're a good dog. And you could never master, anyway, the execution, as it were, of Stay

I used to be a dog. What kind? Oh, a mongrel. Nothing poncy like the black cocker spaniel called Bonzo I had as a child. And certainly not one of those four-footed, aloof snakes that go by the name of greyhound. I remember each and every one of the lice that lived on me. Where did I live? In Sicily, where the sun shines like a fried egg every day of the year. I had the nose of an angel — I could smell porcini fifty trees away. I knew the man who would start a fight with my master the moment he walked in the bar door. I drank a saucer of red wine every day. I loved eating the butterflies that floated past me — one pounce and they were gone. And they were delicious. Better than the bones of a donkey whose meat provided salami for my master and his family. The boy was very good to me — he used to take me down to the sea and let me splash in the waves; then I’d come out onto the sand, barking, and I’d shake all the seawater onto him, wetting his clothes. He loved laughing, and I loved barking. Those were the days. I never saw a kennel. My home was an old blanket under a gnarled vine that had been there since Dante wrote his only sestina, in homage to the troubadours. The heat was often scorching. The boy found it funny to put a straw hat on my head, one dyed in the colors of the Italian flag. I was up early, out scouting for rats to frighten away. 
I once peed on a hedgehog to see what it would do. I ran along the clifftop, barking at the wheeling seagulls, and at the fishing boats they flew above. I sometimes ate my master’s leftover spaghetti bolognese in the taverna. My tail would wag like a fan revolving from the ceiling. I was taught party tricks that I’d be asked to do when the grappa was being downed. I’d lie down on the floor and die, to great applause. I’d sit up and beg, to coos and laughter, and I’d be rewarded with a sausage, and those were sausages to swim the Adriatic for. I’d sometimes go down to the harbor to look for an attractive gray bitch I liked the smell of. I’d have to fight off other dogs, but I was good at that. I ate one of their ears. Once I followed her onto a boat that was heading out to fill up with fish. I had to swim back and I lay on the sand and slept. When I got home my master whipped me. I ran to my blanket, whimpering. I was once brought to a circus, and into the tent of a one-eyed woman with black hair who had a pet parrot. I barked at it, and the parrot expertly returned my bark. I lay on the multi-colored mat and observed the strange bird who observed me. I was glad to leave that tent. I enjoyed hearing the boy play his flute in the evenings. I heard those notes flutter up into the air, and I tried to see them, but never could. I never stopped trying, though. The one thing I couldn’t eat was cheese. The few times I tried it I vomited. On the first occasion that happened I tried to eat it again. If I got the chance now I’d manage it, I’m sure. Who would not like to be a dog in the sun? A dog in the sun, like I used to be, long ago. It was an honor.

Some teeth down there some hair and gray gums Some grass and dirt down there some gristle and whimpers All stupid grinning death running around the yard making a little child cry with each busted grass blade I had a dog I had three dogs I sit and stay They did not disappear into the trees one day Their brains were not broken coral on the street They were meat • Some leash down there some shit and tennis balls I had a dog I had three dogs I sit and beg Their brains were not broken coral on the street They were not meat one day they did not disappear into the trees All stupid grinning death running around the yard making a little child cry with each busted grass blade Some whimpers down there some nipples and pink tum-tums • Some biting tails down there some sunlight and long nails Some fleas dug up some mange and gray tongues I had a dog They were meat I had three dogs They did not disappear into the streets They did not tree Some haunch skid and drag down there some mouths one day They did not smell like baby’s breath All stupid grinning death running around the yard making a little child cry with each busted grass blade • Some grass and dirt down there some teeth and ruined carpets I had a dog I had three dogs I fucked fleas All stupid grinning death running around the yard making a little child cry with each busted grass blade Some eyelashes down there some eating grass and mange some baby’s breath One day their brains were not broken coral on the street They did not disappear into the trees • Some sit and stay down there some meat and sunlight Their brains were not broken coral on the street they did not disappear into the trees They did not fuck fleas All stupid grinning death running around the yard making a little child cry with each busted grass blade Some bones and baby’s breath down there some bark and seizures Distant watery eyes One day I had a dog I had three dogs

It’s like flying in your dreams, she said. You empty Yourself out and just lift off. Soar. It’s like that. * Red.               Red.                Red. Just that word. Sometimes. * Yang & Yin. Like twins tumbling through summer. He, the rooster crowing sun; desperate—afraid— As only men can be. And Yin? Let’s say she has long hair— No, that won’t work. If we are to believe the ancient Chinese, she was a dog howling moon. * When I counted out the pills, it was a slowing down. Like the delay between when the car goes through the dip and your stomach falls away— And won’t stop. * Of course it was because she didn’t fit my mold. So I punished her. And why? And why? And why? You did it, I said. You did it. Wouldn’t fill my world. * And eventually we all kill our mothers. Their eyes a tenderness that doesn’t flinch from it. Knowing. Eventually. * What else is there? * Paula’s paintings are real. The women thick, visceral, like stubborn cliffs the sea cannot contain—or drown. * Or dogs. And such as these drove Homer to despair— And his cry: Oh to see! To see! To see! * So Paula says: To be a dog woman is bestial is good. Eating, snarling. Utterly believable. Gross. * Like when Cesaria Evora breaks your heart with a smile all melancholy and sea and salt. Assim ’m ta pidi mar Pa ’l leva ’me pa ’me ca voeta And it doesn’t matter that you don’t know what the words mean. Some things are beyond that. * So. Tanya bought the record because Cesaria’s face is beautiful with all the lost love of the world and darker than the blue of the sun setting over the Atlantic. * It’s in the angle of light washing her hair with sun into a puddle that catches in the throat The wood deck creaks from the weight of all that air and sun and silence Water chuckling in the tiny fountain in the corner holding up the song of wind chimes and flies And it’s all here. Fire. Water. Stone. Wood. * All caught up in Yeats and the cuckoo that wasn’t a real bird but cried with all the agony of the desire for flight hemmed by wooden wings, and springs and cogs. I think. * Or looking for Rilke— How the panther is like the rage of a doll’s soul caught in the body: but to say: under an open window, a violin Accomplishment though is another matter— Just ask Baudelaire and so I thought I could do it. Necromancer, necromancer, necromancer make me a mate only one of my ribs pray take. So why won’t women fit into that space? * Is that why in the photograph David plays an inflatable lyre? Does his smile make it all artifice? * But life is this and it will not be contained. The Igbo say: No one can outrun their shadow. And this is good. This is hope. Because, or maybe, we cannot outrun love. * To drive down a road, she said. Until it stops at the edge of the sea. An ocean vast and immense, she said. If you are lucky, she said. It fills you.

scooby-doo was trying to tell us something when every time that monster mask got snatched off it was a greedy white dude. • in ’97, a black comic gets on stage, 
says,you ever notice how white dogsbe like woof woof & black dogs be likeruff ruff motherfuckaaaaa!! • the dog upstairs won’t shut up & i’ve thought of ending his  little  noisy 
life but i have to remember he 
matters he matters & if i did the 
brown girl upstairs would cry forever. • dog (n.): a man’s best friend. (see: fetch, roll over, K-9, good boy, put down.) ex.my dog died, I had to do it with my own hands. dawg (n.): a man’s best friend. (see: blunt rolled already, handshake, my nigga, put me on.) ex.my dawg died, he did it with his own hands. • dogs in this house eat the same thing we do. we eat greens, he eat 
greens. fried bologna, neck bones, 
leftovers. ...    he died from the suga, the gout or whatever 
 came for big mama came 
back for the dog. • everybody love Lassie, but what 
about Sounder? • possible rite of passage #37: graduating from outrunning the 
block’s dogs to outrunning the block’s police. • i too have been called boy & expected to come, kneel. • what Animorph did you want to be? i wanted to be the boy who turned into the bird limp in the dog’s wet mouth, holding me toward his human saying I made 
this for you. • the dog upstairs needs to stop running his mouth talking all that shit I can hear him up there fool don’t think i understand he don’t know i got a bark too teeth too thumbs & a terrible child’s mind. • something about Air Bud felt    ...    
the talented obedient beast, the roar of the eggshell crowd. • dogs aren’t racist but they can be trained to be so as can the water as can the trees as can gravity as can anything marked by a pale hand & turned bloodgold a bitter king’s magic touch. • i’m the kind of werewolf that turns into a shih tzu. ruff ruff motherfucka. • while my grandmama spoke on the clean blood of Jesus i watched the hounds in the mud hot for anything warm & thought of something better to worship. • i stand in the dark bathroom in my tightest shortest shorts my vaselined legs the only things catching light. i say i’m a real bitch3 times, clap my hands above my head. nothing happens. i walk back into the club, put my hand on a man’s chest & it’s a paw. • the gay agenda made CatDog to offer your child’s gender to their seven-headed god. • a dead dog is a hero, a dead lion is a hero, a cloned sheep is a miracle, a dead child is a tragedy (depending on the color, the nation, the occupation or non-
occupation of the parents). • during the new moon i switch from an –a to the traditional –er, i raid the farm, smash the melon patch, swallow chickens whole, spit out the bones ground down 
to smoke, howl Geee-zuss! toward the sky’s great nothing. • • dog bred to smell the coke/dog bred to smell the bomb/dog bred to smell the nigger hid beneath the floorboards. • dude’s dog won’t leave the room won’t let his lord out of his sight 
won’t let his master disappear won’t let himself go hungry won’t let nothing happen to the one who brings the water even if it means being owned, being witness to his hunger. or maybe he’s just dumb. • stay. open. stay. look at me. stay. open. teeth. bad. bad. stay. open. treat. treat. pant. wag. treat. good. stay. good. stay. • i listen to DMX smoking a blunt doing bout 90 in a 55 when the cop ask if i know why he pulled me over 
i say i’m just trying to be me. • the dog upstairs won’t shut up but i can’t hate him he’s up there alone all 
day making noise must be the only way he knows he’s not a ghost.

As if there could be a world Of absolute innocence In which we forget ourselves The owners throw sticks And half-bald tennis balls Toward the surf And the happy dogs leap after them As if catapulted— Black dogs, tan dogs, Tubes of glorious muscle— Pursuing pleasure More than obedience They race, skid to a halt in the wet sand, Sometimes they'll plunge straight into The foaming breakers Like diving birds, letting the green turbulence Toss them, until they snap and sink Teeth into floating wood Then bound back to their owners Shining wet, with passionate speed For nothing, For absolutely nothing but joy.

Dog days doggone dog-tired dogwork of summer, mowing the grass we're all coming to the dog tags of you, me, I, we, stashed in a box, doghouse throwaways. Even the namesake tree whose blossoms some call Jesus-flowers for the rust-grooved tips of the petals as if nails now removed had indented the shape of a cross, betrays my mood how all those springs ago seeing our tree nailed with bloody after bloody crucifix I said this beauty's no foo-foo and sure enough my dog-weary dearie mowing today, the spring long gone, I brush a limb on whose tired leaves mites amble the edible thoroughfares and as if to confirm it, our neighbor's mutt runs along the fence yapping dogwood dogwood dogwood as the mower chugs on, our train leaving for the city beneath the grass.