One of these days this bristly bitch
is gonna shake us off like so much dirty
bathwater. It’ll be a bigger howl than
Earth Day, that day--we’ll be driving
and shitting, eating and fighting
and mating, wasting every useful thing,
when suddenly, bang! – there we’ll be,
sharing a collective view from space,
loosened from her shaggy mantle.
O! Bright Dog Star! How obedient she’ll be,
watching as we dodge ourselves, millions
of lousy particles salting the lifeless firmament,
her tongue wagging. Just another day for a dog.
And afterward, it will be our turn to watch
her stretch blue hide across the void and chew
a bone, take a nap, dig her paws deep
to bury our bones where she'll never find them.
Why wait? Witness the fetch of her infinity
while you still can: how she pants, rolls over,
plays dead, rises again behind that easy smile
Tamara Kaye Sellman is editor/publisher of MARGIN: Exploring Modern Magical Realism and the editor behind the free speech and media literacy blog:archive, Candleflame. Her work (poetry, fiction, essays) has appeared internationally and typically addresses issues of (in)tolerance, environmentalism, women's rights, censorship and other sociopolitical concerns. Her most recent work, "Peppercorns" (Gargoyle, June 2005) reflects upon mistaken cultural identity and the growing ubiquity of the skinhead youth in western Washington state.