- They Left Their Dog and a Record Playing, and: Still Life on Mars
California, poetry
California, poetry, Mars
They Left Their Dog and a Record Playing
They left their dog and a record playing,the boy and girl next door. Last night
they argued to music, like they do;this morning only the song was home—
a dog asleep in the yard—the yellow dog,the mortified, raving yard.
The girl wore an egg of amber on a chainaround her neck. The egg bore a black
widow spider; its hourglass brownas bourbon; the sand run out for good,
for the whole neighborhood. How theygot so much in that little car
we’ll never know. How they got so much,they couldn’t agree. It was what
they fought about. And the dog, the recordplaying. The boy wore a wallet
with a chain to his belt. The wallet borea skull with smiling eyes, the word
“Misfits” worn away with paying. The dooris open, skull dark. We don’t need to go
to know it’s empty, to see the playeron its milk crate, playing the record over,
filling the house, spilling the dog outside,like an oath, a vow left to keep itself. [End Page 144]
Still Life on Mars
It’s taken everything to bring them here:the peaches, grapes, oysters, the goblet ofwine, the table & cloth. Hardest of allwas keeping the snail alive 300 days,hearty enough to survive two secondsof posing.
We place it last, assuming theother props will bear in the red air. Theydon’t. Before the snail dies (and it diesin “One Mississippi”) the peaches liquefy,the grapes, too, the oysters implode likenovae. It’s a massacre, right down to thegood linen & Château Latour.
We paint itanyway, going slow to compensate for ourridiculous gloves, stiff necks, the dim lightof the afternoon which is blue here. It’sworth all this to get it right. Indeed, ourlife has never been so urgently shown.How brief the fruit, the vintage & vessel.How apt the snail, the half inchof its glittering service. [End Page 145]
Brendan Constantine is the author of several collections of poetry, including Calamity Joe (Red Hen, 2012) and Birthday Girl With Possum (Write Bloody, 2011). His work has appeared in FIELD, Ploughshares, Zyzzyva and Ninth Letter. He teaches poetry at the Windward School in Los Angeles.