Dog
By Dustin Nightingale

In my garden, the tomatoes yellow from my laziness,
as do the ferns and spinach. I sit with a book I doze in and out of,
not sure what to do with its information, spat on the page,
about growing old and listening for silence. I feel the book
is something I’m suppose to read, something to be quizzed on
when I die and I best notice the rhyme schemes and loose tetrameter
and know why the author has written it this way. But it’s boring,
and for months now, unable to drink the slightest bit of alcohol
without spitting it back up in a foamy mess, I’m boring myself.
Having spent my evenings and early mornings reading
the things I feel I should read, and should be able to quote
at will, I have learned next to nothing but the names of things
of which I’ve already named. In the mornings, I kiss my wife
and I kiss my wife when I come home from work. Is she as bored
as I? Does she want to put on the tiniest skirt, go dancing
till dawn and drink gin till she falls into the bed of a stranger?
Or is she content with her own books and bike rides
watching the ditch weeds grow to bend under their own weight?
I don’t believe her self-contentment as I’m sure
she doesn’t believe mine. I’ve tried gardening and collecting coins.
I’ve tried cooking fancy meals and painting scenery,
among other things, all of which have given way to indifference.
I remember doing drugs till dawn and sleeping with strangers
who stole my stuff. I remember reciting words to air
until the neighbors complained and I boyishly tossed balloons
of gasoline into their rose bushes. How they hated me
and how I loved their hatred of me. I felt I felt something different
from everyone else, but what was it? It wasn’t love, the way
my wife will tease my hair until I fall asleep, despite her own tiredness,
or how we’ll rub the grit from our necks on these seemingly calm days.
And when I put the book down and get into the car and drive,
I don’t plan on going anywhere but end up at the pound to look
for a dog that could cut us in two and find a muscular beast bred to bite.
It howls and barks into the night, keeping us and our neighbors awake,
and I go out to beat the silence into it, but stop, not seeing the fierce gums
and board snapping jaws I thought were there, but a fear of the dark
and the sticks that fly through it. And in the dark we sit together, me, saying
good boy, good boy, I know you’re scared, good boy.