THE VOID

Our dog died in the ugly disaster

that is aloneness. She died on

the first floor, in my sister’s apartment,

on a makeshift pad shifted halfway

out from under her. And I caught the center

of her dying, the shake, the after-bit

tongue swelling from her maw.

My girl. Good girl. She half-died alone

and finished with us there.

My sister and I rubbed her side

and she shook and blinked then blinked

no more but breathed a slow breath

as I rubbed her head then kissed her

forehead. Even in death she was mine

to kiss. She was not ugly. Much like

the story of the boy from school

who was shot in the head and lived to talk

about it and lived to hear us all talk about it,

the hole that needed the help of others

to close. And his neighbors around him looked

into the hole in his head as if slowly realizing

they’d all that time been unburying themselves. And I

imagine the hole like a howl from a dog,

like the diamonds in a chain-link fence

that let sight in but not the flesh. This

is the end, do not enter or take part in

what little you’ve been allowed to see.

Howl like a warning. Howl like a plea.

Do not pass. Do not step into this shape

in which everything ever missing takes shape:

the dead dog buried in the backyard,

the contour of sorrow that is any boy’s back

darkening then disappearing altogether

from the door on his way to school,

on his way back

but he must leave first. Everything

must leave before it comes back.

Even the trees

lining the one-way streets flanked

by liquor stores bright as the mansions

of devils. Even the trees must first catch fire,

drop their fire, stand naked in penance

as we rake their burnt garments to the gutter.

Yes, even wakefulness must go toward sleep

and sleep must wake. Even the body

leaves then returns

as dirt, as a mind reeling into itself,

a brittle recollection:

Was our dog thirteen or fourteen when she died?

When I kissed her forehead, was she

already gone or still passing through,

the last bit of her dying mixing

with my sister’s breath, the vet appointment

of no use now. I closed her eyes. It’s no use, howls

the entrance wound but they fixed up the boy

who spoke another language for a short time,

the trees bowing to hear him better

beyond their dancing boughs, in spite

of their leaves that let in a little mothlight,

a little streetlight so that gaps of leaf-

shaped darkness gasped across his face,

mouth-shaped leaves on his face,

and they spoke back to the hole, We too leave.

We all leave. Hush. You’ll come back. Lazarus.

Concrete Christ. A memory.

A haunting. A possession

like an illness, like a bullet,

like a dog’s eyes staring back

then merely open

with no looking involved,

like a boy’s head

babbling on.