A dog wanders behind the store,
its paws asking the gravel why it's alone,
its nose groping the air for the warm touch
of another canine's sharp, liquid kiss,
or a soft, solid embrace.
The store's front opens, spilling
waves of people crashing into metal shores,
They move with an unconscious rhythm,
led by each other, all falling in time on
their special outcroppings of stone.
They like to think these places are special—
painted, decorated, modified,
with different colors, shapes, and screams.
Yet I can see that inside, when
you strip away the candyapple reds, midnight blacks, and eggshell whites,
their guts raw and gleaming,
gray like the horizon,
like the clouds I inhale,
like the air the dog makes love to.
Scents flick across its fur like tongues,
and moan in its ear of their special pleasures.
Each claims its own taste, own shape, own scream,
some hard, some soft, some dull, some lively,
but all call to the dog as sirens of smell.
When the wind begins to howl,
and the dog ceases to blow,
currents sink me in the ocean trench of the parking lot,
all the special ships with their special passengers gone,
and I know that underneath it they're all still the same,
under candyapple cheek paint, midnight eyelash ink, and eggshell foundations,
their guts are all the same: raw and gleaming.
Dry and wrecked, all I can do is bury the dog's carcass,
abandoned by its breezy lovers, I take it
to the hill, where weeds open to swallow its body.
As I let go, I hear a voice calling, and am afraid
that it's one of those sirens who doomed that poor beast.
But this voice isn't the same, and it is one,
while the other sirens were many.