Dog Bite, and: Ragdale, and: Summer Storm Prayer
- Dog Bite, and: Ragdale, and: Summer Storm Prayer
DOG BITE
Will you play with the Beast like a sparrowAnd put him on a leash for your girls?
I.
Within high stone walls we picnic above a giant cypress bole, branches thrown down in stilled celestial fury, as the girls twirl downhill in their long dresses to beatbox on the fountain shell.
Complete wellbeing aches at the horizon, civilized sun hazing high grasses, and a Pomeranian’s even mane wends its aura between unblown dandelions as Fiona runs to pet the nasty unleashed bitch. [End Page 90]
II.
The next day (“Czarina”’s rabies certificate received) we tear down the fence in the name of neighboring. Husbands haul latticed flats and lay them down not quite as gently as unwanted thoughts that enter the mind during contemplative prayer; as the line between us disappears, our yard becomes their yard, theirs ours. The dogwood in our back corner now canopies a shared plot to scatter grass seed over; where soccer balls got stuck, their hostas variegate our peonies. How close we are to praising grace, when we catch the trace of fur: rabbit fluff bitten from a burrow the doe dug over there, to keep a fence between her nest and our dog, who, amidst our swelling souls, has beheaded seven kits and strewn them out as prizes, oblong side-eyes confirming them as bunnies, even if, in my surprise, I tell the girls (who can’t know otherwise) they must be voles. [End Page 91]
III.
The ceiling fan spars with little Children’s squeals Amid droning air Compressors well-manicured Shrubs conceal.
(Shouldn’t zeal, if real, combust The clutter of our English Tudor, turn over Butter lettuce pots, burst The fertilizer?)
Who quivers in a tremble Where the fence stood between our House and the Eitels’?
Who waits to hear Freshets trickle?
Whose facets glint, Infinite with evidence of all this Epektasis, dynamic as Job’s whale
Or even the Crocodile, Who eats grass like a bull, Who drags the swamp like a rake, Who makes the ocean boil—
Who, so unsentimental, He Or She hauls up the savage And the good So intermingled
We can only be still And listen for some whistling within Our neighbors’ souls? [End Page 92]
RAGDALE
Crouched in nettles, gelled like lizards coiled in eggshells, sweet fluted bluebells I grew too worshipful toward, your tendriled temples fair and freckled I forgave the world for, the sticky stalks that spoked it, the swell of hornets around wheat bonnets, all deep as a freshet on this woodland trail where moon-bodied dragonflies clack black wings into the thickets and the thrush sings why-you-why [End Page 93]
SUMMER STORM PRAYER
Bar the doors, lower the ropes, close up the porch like an ark and rock as the rain whitens farms, squelching sawdust farmers were trying to burn.
Dare it to slash at the laths, gush off both side-roofs and tear the dogtrot’s aluminum as it spanks rotted sills to sorghum.
Let the long porch dim, chairs wobble with nobody on them, the sky above the pasture roil like butter-and-cream corn.
Deliver us unto the pour-down, Lord. Make these old floors sound. [End Page 94]
danielle chapman’s first collection of poems, Delinquent Palaces, was published in 2015. More recently, her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Poetry. She lives in Hamden, Connecticut, and teaches creative writing at Yale University.
Footnotes
Note: All italicized lines are adapted from Stephen Mitchell’s translation of The Book of Job.
