The Dog Wants His Dinner
for Clark Coolidge
The sky is pitiless. I beg your pardon? OK then the sky is pitted. The yard is sand and laced with roots afloat on rock encasing fire. You think so do you. No. Yes. Don’t know. Check one. Forget all you ever knew. Sorry. Not my romance. What is? Sorry. We don’t take in trick questions. You mean? I do: put down that. Put that down too. Skies of spit, seas where whales piss and die to make a bar of scented soap, uhm smells good. She came in like an ex- cited headline. The deer they all were starving! To death, even, perhaps. And eating people! What to do with these disordered herds of words? I said I would eat my words and do so, now you see. He eats them, all up. Greedily. Yesterday the air was squeaky clean today it’s dull and lifeless as an addict’s armpit. Surely you mean leafless. I have a flea bite, here, pink, of course as an eye disease: the cat , who brings me fleas dies like a dog, sleepily, or an unwatered plant. That was exciting wasn’t it. It’s not that I crave. Uh did you say crave? Some words are briefly worse than others: get the Librium gun and point it and the Kodak at that Kodiak. You see? No hope. So don’t hope. Hop, skip, jump or lie down. Feed your face. Now feed the dog. He ate his. He is eating the cat who objects. Fix the fire. Put out the light. An ice cold hand slides in the window to touch your uncovered head forehead cheeks lips lobes and all with worlds of fire chilled by distance. O night. Bedclothes loosen. Unseen twigs erect themselves in air. You asleep too, O magic root.
– James Schuyler
