My wife recently started walking dogs.
Yesterday, this one dog, Jenny, had
cornered Trin in its house–
in front of the door, snarling,
growling & shaking.
Trin called her boss & waited
to be rescued, the whole time
holding Jenny back w/ a stool–
A practice test towards
her lion-taming degree.
She was nervous afterwards, naturally,
so I walked w/ her & the next dog,
a fat, orange clump of flesh
called Grace.
Grace is a mastiff that
looks like a design-flaw
by Jim Henson.
But she’s a cool dog, so this
gives me a chance to tell
Trin about a dog that
chased me once–
“Me & my friend Kenny were riding
our bikes on Rt. 84, when outta the
blue, this huge, black lab starts barking
like mad & zeroes in on us.
When it ran across the road–
cats usually look both ways, dogs rarely do–
it got hit hard by a Chevy truck, & its
back-legs were waffled
to the road.
Its yelps were horrible.
Hell’s soundtrack.
So the poor thing tried crawlin
back home, draggin chunks of flesh
that used to be its legs.
Me & Kenny stopped our bikes
& watched.
You remember that house.
We passed it the other day,
where Mark H. died.
He had cancer all over his body.
He was sliced by a Viet-cong solider
in the back. I remember asking him
to see the scar when I was
a kid.
I thought I saw Jeremy, his son,
the other day, behind the house.
I wanted to stop & say I was sorry
bout his ol man, but I don’t
think it would’ve mattered.”