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#BlahbylonsPoetrySelections

The Dogs and I Walked Our Woods

By Gretchen Primack

and there was a dog, precisely the colors of autumn,

asleep between two trunks by the trail.

But it was a coyote, paws pink

with a clean-through hole in the left,

and a deep hole in the back of the neck,

dragged and placed in the low crotch

of a tree. But it was two coyotes,

the other's hole in the side of the neck,

the other with a dried pool of blood below

the nose, a dried pool below the anus,

the other dragged and placed

in the adjoining low crook, the other's body

a precise mirror of the first. The eyes were closed,

the fur smooth and precisely the colors

of autumn, a little warm to my touch though the bodies

were not. The fur was cells telling themselves

to spin to keep her warm to stand

and hunt and keep. It was a red

autumn leaf on the forest floor, but

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it was a blooded brown leaf, and another, because

they dragged the bodies to create a monument

to domination, to the enormous human,

and if I bore a child who suffered to see this,

or if I bore a child who gladdened to see this, or if

I bore a child who kept walking, I could not bear

it, so I will not bear one.

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