After the Meat Tree
I
Man’s best friend, woman’s best friend are has a jay, and mere has an add. I flower mere and he follows me that was made of wood and flowers and see, it is pronounced mer as the french for sea not mere lie down you are drunk. Remember the dog is not dead because you can not find its pulse; please go have sex with your fiancé now.
II
How do we fit dogs,
flowers, hunters, and eagles
in the apartment?
III
She turned me on to wood dresses: the flowers of the oak, and the flowers of the broom, and the flowers of the meadowsweet, his midwestern speech. He hears it when I say water, my owner’s mid atlantic accent. It is too dark for him to see that hiraeth is tattooed on my left hind paw. In the fourth branch of the mabinogion, we are sensitive to the earth’s magnetic field as canis lupus familiaris.
IV
The fans were the quieting part; I only heard him in my right ear. He wants to be the magician king, Math fab Mathonwy. If he had feet, not paws, then I would hold them arch to iliac crest. How faraway are his heels? The buck and doe escape from the hunting party once upon a time growing into the forest.
V
metamorphosis
my claws catch on the gray cloth
of his shorts kneading
VI
Sweep the fallen plaster, wipe down the widow sill, the wall, and the moulding. Find the dustbin, and lift the trash bag. When the cinder dog returns from the dumpster, I shower him with the water shaken form my hair. He admires my failure to cook leeks in lieu of sleep, daffodils without the yell oh flowers. What about the rosa rugosa? What about the cat, the hunter of birds, the eagle at the meating tree?
VII
the gutter and drains
raindrops were inside with us
lust, dust, must the mold
VIII
be coming? Before sleeping in the fireplace, we do not notice the gray dust that might have been ashes. Life by leaf, the earliest tales can be found in the Red Book of Hergest and the White Book of Rhydderch. Here’s to the night wood. Dear werewolf, half a week from the full moon howling at the front door. Dog’s tails communicate their emotional state.
IX
He had me at chinese frying pan, really, alone I sleep like a prized fish. Comma mark on the dog bed, paused nose towards my owner’s bedroom. Not in the fireplace, but the hearth is the meeting tree retold with wagging tails. The moral of the fourth branch is that curses can be reversed with tricks, so why is a woman with a horse sexual and a woman with a dog not?
X
We had dog breath, a broom, a dustpan, a large and unfamiliar towel all green with which to clean. The grey clothes we both wore. He worried about his coat roaning out to pewter, to the stainless steel key I keep to the apartment. Towards silver I wanted to tell him nine days and a grey-blue dog-bed ago. All those sterling eternity hoops keep him from biting my ears, white against white, I still want to bite his ears.
XI
Lleu by leaf by life
leaking, fallen in ceiling
light house keep to clean
XII
I hold the color of the Gwynedd sky in my head. To sleep with the ghost of his covertly large paws, typos, scent, so much depends upon the feet and math. The magician king has greater powers than his nephew; therefore, the wolves are made human only to be made into dear. The boar’s neck bristles attract me. The moon waxes full this week, and we find ourselves a little feral.
XIII
metaphor of were
wolves tamed to I lick when he
noses me on the hearth
XIV
Man’s best friend takes the form add a geode (add damn the river Dee, the water falling at ease). No more of the ceiling falls on them in the later morning. Woman’s best friend is a rottweiler dreaming of sexual positions to satisfy their metaphor. It is in the nature of good dogs to sleep on the hearth; their tails close.
Part of The Learned Pig’s Wolf Crossing editorial season, spring/summer 2017.
Cover image: Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, illuminated manuscript (c.1412 – 1416). Detail from calendar scene, August. Photo: R.M.N. / R.-G. Ojéda
