The Low Passions by Anders Carlson-Wee

Author:Anders Carlson-Wee [Carlson-Wee, Anders]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
ISBN: 9780393652390
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2019-03-12T04:30:00+00:00

CLAUSEN’S DOG

We float the rubber lifeboat down the cul-de-sacs,

through the backyards of prefabs and ramblers

where the tops of small trees beckon like oil-

blackened hands. We’re looking for animals.

Dogs and cats and other pets left behind

because leaving them behind was the rule

during the evacuation. For hours there’s nothing.

Silence and the sculling of a plastic paddle.

The far-off gas station sunken past the pumps.

The hundred-year flood covering everything

three feet deep. When we find Clausen’s dog

it’s not where we were told to look. Not curled

on his roof, not barking from the glassless window

of his attic. When we find Clausen’s dog it’s tied

to a cinderblock with a choke-chain leash,

an earflap lapping softly at the surface.

The chain cinches down through loose neck

flesh to visible bone, a minnow hovers

in the eyehole. When we find Clausen’s dog

the colorless fur clumps like a stubble of bunchgrass

receding from the furrowed plains of the ribcage.

The bobbing sidemeat nibbled by perch.

Chunks glaumed away by turtles.

When we find Clausen’s dog the bone-paws drag

the bottom like lures, jerking forward

on the same wrist-hinge as the living paws

of a sleeping dog, whimpering, trying to run

inside a dream.

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