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Flash Floods and Slower Speed
- Red Hen Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
63 FlAsh Floods And slower sPeed Sophomore year of college I lived in an apartment With an arroyo out back, Dry except for flash floods So the homeless built homes Out of cardboard and broken boards Of shipping crates, Their grocery carts With scraps of fabric Wound around the outside So they looked like the rag carpet I bought at Pier 1 With the last twelve dollars Of my athletic scholarship check, And then there wasn’t enough To get my puppy shots. I don’t remember what I named him. He had one blue eye, one brown, And the classified ad Had placed his breed at sheperd-wolf Hybrid. I remember he was thin, The apartment empty, the kitchen cabinets Filled with dust and shelf-paper, Its blues worn down. I fed him dry food In an old steel bowl, Nights I didn’t come home He was out in the yard For a night and a day, His own square of concrete, Wooden fence.There was a strip of grass Along the edge, roots thick And stubborn where he’d shit. Coming home, I’d hear him 64 Throw his body against the glass doors In the back when he heard my key, But I was too worn down To let him in. It was The semester I’d lost everything, You see, the semester my fevers Hit 103 several times a week, The semester my feet started To move with slower speed, the semester Chills and heat ran on through me Like monsoons down that arroyo So fierce everything swept clean, Makeshift carts and homes Upended into fabrics of scrap, And him, I gave him nothing. Five months of loneliness, Howling after trains, pacing that 10x10 Concrete, until Parvo ate his lungs From the inside and he didn’t get up When I slid the glass door To let him in. I buried him In a dumpster, limbs long and stiff In the two garbage bags it took To cover both legs and his face And what I buried down there Is a flash flood of broken boards, Seeping, creaking, tearing clean. ...