The Black Dog

“I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.” 

-JOHN KEATS

I heard Churchill had called it canine.

It woke me just this morning, soft nose pushed

to my sleepy cheek, breath shuttling down

my cool neck: my faithful black dog.

His tail clubbed me all shades of violet.

The sun disc-sawed me in half.

He follows me to the kitchen.

Here he comes, his wolfish shape

gleaming like polished jet. I stoop over

my coffee, hiss at him to shoo.

My voice is thick as seafoam

and the silly dog is deaf;

his dumb tongue a huge slab of mauve,

searching my hand like a rodent.

When milk won’t do, he loves the salt of rivers.

His rough tongue batters my eye.

Wherever I go, he follows.

At office desks, restaurant booths,

hunched in the seat of a taxi,

my faithful dog sniffs out my bones.

When lovers come, he turns possessive.

I wriggle free from their fingers,

stop them kissing the sides of my jaw.

They leave when I talk to the papered wall

and tell them the guard dog is snarling.

I grieve when their footsteps have died.

I go to bed at odd hours

to watch the small pulse of blue time.

When sleep stands me up for the zero moon,

the dog strikes me down with his paw. 

The Female Nude

I have done it. I have done it in this room

in broad daylight: unravelled myself to the human shape,

shown them the flush of my cheek. I shoulder away

my silk scarf, seize a whole breast in my hand.

The lamp gawps. Under the glass eye

my boot tips, a leather confession.

The guitar cools beneath my rib.

Your camera swallows the music—

the muted flats; greyscales its shocking blues.

This is the shape of the female nude,

her bald toes ten revelations.

 

I have scattered my wallflower fetters.

They crumple in heaps of blue silk, gold rings,

the virginal white cotton blouse.

Shutters whir and snap, the black eyelid.

This is the hand I raise to my hair,

the palm that has cut me from mirrors.

Skin cells, not pixels. Resolution of flesh.

This is the body of woman.