Photography © Bonnie Matthews Brock

 

Neuter Him and End the Cycle

The dog owner next door
refuses to neuter the owned dog.
“Owned” is the word for the pet
who spends all summer chained to a front yard tree,
hormonal even in thunderstorms,
maybe because of thunderstorms and pathetic fallacy.

What human isn’t ego-boosted by
living vicariously through four-on-the-floor orgiastic howls?
Canine Caligula paces an ever-narrowing circle
unconsciously, beneath the shade of a maple,
delimiting his narrowing sentience shadowed by encroaching nature,
the colonial grass worn away, popping up vestigial roots
that tangle the civilized leash, tripping on need,
the leash becoming its own ironic straitjacket thread
spooled around ultra-inhibited ankles.

The neighbour experiences power of owning a Roman emperor,
turning the lawn into a drama of Draconian denial,
even the cruelty of so many tennis balls lazily tossed just beyond reach.

There is power that the neighbourhood hears in a dog’s lament.
The teenagers in the corner house subconsciously sympathizing
when they harmonize their guitar lessons and shitposts

the adults across the street pausing to look in the rear-view mirror
while they back out of their divorcing driveway,
wishing they had the dog’s interest.
fantasizing letting it off the leash just to see whose leg it would hump first
like a barking Roman oracle confirming or denying rumours among the
          phallus graffiti.

The local SPCA imagines more puppies to unwant,
the cycles of foster homes and well-meaning transient hosts,
who are themselves also disappearing because the small condominiums
that cost the same as a house
haven’t the space nor the yard wide as an attention span
to absorb the consequences of homeowner egoism.

 

Terry Trowbridge has appeared in Oddball before. He is also grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for two writing grants during the polycrisis,

Bonnie Matthews Brock is a Florida-based photographer, as well a school psychologist. She loves hiking the urban and woodland trails of “anywhere” (and pausing often to shoot photos) with her very patient husband (and often collaborator), Ted. Her images have been featured on the covers of magazines such as Ibbetson Street, Wild Roof Journal, Poesy Magazine, Humana Obscura, and Arkansas Review; as well as on the pages of publications such as Oddball Magazine, Ember Chasm Review, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Beaver Magazine, and Lateral. Her works are archived at institutions such as Poets House NYC, Brown University, and Harvard University.