BLESSING THE ANIMALS

by David Chorlton

On and around The Feast of St. Francis, October 4 this year, many churches organize a Blessing of the Animals to which dogs, cats, bird, bunnies, ponies, chickens, and all creatures great and small are welcome.

Here’s a cat who’d take

the dinner from a china plate but bless

her anyway; she doesn’t know

the rules of etiquette. Consider the coyote

blessed when he stops in the middle of the street

and looks back at a pedestrian

his wildness has touched. Bless the starlings

who were fruitful and

multiplied from coast to coast, and bless

the common pigeon for

turning waste lots into food. Bless

the rattlesnake who curls up at a trail’s edge

by stepping carefully around him,

and save

for the jaguar who returns to

ancient hunting grounds

a special blessing that will follow him through

darkness. Shall we dare

to shower favor on the rats who climb the final

daylight and cavort

in yards and vegetable beds? Or spare

an extra prayer for the Great horned owl

when he is done with ferrying souls

to comfort and a resting place?

When the Cooper’s hawk is waiting

for a mourning dove, be generous as this world

in which an ocean is the predator

and a river is the prey.

David Chorlton has lived in Phoenix since 1978, and has shared home with many cats, birds, and occasionally dogs. The creatures who visit his yard appear frequently in his new book Poetry Mountain from Cholla Needles in Joshua Tree, CA., who also published the poems his white cat Raissa wrote in the late Clinton years (of a very concrete nature) in a little book called Gilded Snow along with her owner's commentary.

SUBURBAN SMOKE

by Alejandro Escudé

Sometimes I visit the suburb of LA
I grew up in. There was a park
a block away from the house we rented.
I played little league baseball there.
It was a park, like a park with swings
and a pool. Now it’s a homeless encampment
and the little leagues are gone.
Maybe baseball is gone too—I can’t tell.
I mean I watch it. I root for the Mets
because that’s the team I was on
when I was a scrawny lefty outfielder
because there was no way
the coach was playing me on first base
or shortstop. I was lucky if I got to bat.
The coach was a winner; if you’re American,
you know what I mean by that.
I was lucky if I got to bat.
I remember hearing the LA riots looming
in the east; a hornets nest of helicopters,
the smell of smoke, a cacophony of sirens.
My father talked of Reginald Denny
he said: “I just crossed that intersection.”
His face pale. “I had so many tools
in my truck too.” Maybe that’s what
a suburb is, a place where one just
barely avoids the tragedy of America.
Oh there were lawns, basketball hoops
above garage doors. On Sundays,
it was very quiet, and I don’t remember
talking about the President.
He wasn’t a big fat face in the sky.
There weren’t goose-stepping posters
lining every citizen’s mind, a fear-bomb
exploding each half hour. In every suburb,
there’s a Beirut, a Moscow, a Jerusalem,
a Kenosha, a T***p bent over in his driveway,
cutting up a freshly caught rattlesnake.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.