Oh Nelly

It’s common for dog-owners to note that they know other people’s dogs, but don’t remember the people themselves, just as parents often find themselves known as “Benjamin’s parents” rather than as … was it Melanie? It starts with an M, I think. With that cute low-maintenance bobbed haircut. And her husband, the one with the hat. Benjamin’s parents. You know.

Anyway, no, I don’t know the names of the people who walk the white-haired fluffball named Ziggy that I see almost every morning. He’s got a soul patch and a scally cap, and she’s got blonde curls, and they’re in their 40s. Ziggy’s about a year old, and a great dog, and the people are nice too. They recognize me with or without Lucy, but I doubt they remember my name. I don’t remember theirs. It’s nice to see them anyway. The same with Lottie, the French bulldog that stays within five feet of her owner, on-leash or not. I have no idea what her name is, although I’ve been introduced often enough that it would be embarrassing to ask again.

My favorite dog, though, the one that sticks with me, is Nelly. She’s 15 years old, and you can tell that she used to be mostly brown but is now mostly grey. I couldn’t tell you her breed, but she’s a little smaller than a Labrador, with oversized feet that look transplanted from a mastiff. With her is a guy I think of as Dave, who told me once that he still sometimes thinks she’ll grow into those feet. He looks like he could be anywhere from 50 to 70. He walks slowly, because Nelly walks slowly. She’s quite literally on her last legs: When she stops walking, they start to buckle and she sags toward the ground. If she sits, the man who might be named Dave has to lift her back up to her feet before they can turn around and walk back home. I’m always glad to see the two of them.

Housepainting

There must already be a poem about painting houses; how it’s all preparation, and goes faster if you’re patient and careful at the start; about cutting in with an angled brush pushed against the grain to just reach an edge or corner; about cleanup and dropcloths and stray speckles found weeks later. Every human endeavor, in good light, is like this.

Three first drafts: Cimex, Workaday, Five O’Clock Somewhere

The Reproductive Habits of Cimex

Traumatic insemination
is exactly what it sounds like.
There’s no metaphor in this:
A hypodermic organ, a carapace,
and semen in the blood.

The parasite is not a metonym
for shame, nor horror;
There is no sign to read in filth,
in bloodstained sheets
and scarlet welts.

It is, and that is all.

Workaday
The mop-up man at the arcade puts on his gloves
refreshes the supply of concentrated soap
and wipes away the hour’s humiliating stains,
scant seconds of secret lonely joy
and half-burnt cigarettes.
He keeps his head down.
Nobody he wants to see is here.

The banker’s agent changes locks
on the last failure of the day.
The bin outside replete,
he signs his name
and shuts the door.
He keeps his head down.
Nobody he wants to see is here.

Closing time, the bar gone still
a whole long night of smiles
reduced to aching joints and broken glass.
The regulars are not the barkeep’s friends.
They’ll learn it soon enough if they get sober.
He keeps his head down.
Nobody he wants to see is here.

5 O’Clock Somewhere
Open up a bottle, climb inside
and let the world recede,
and make myself an empty husk
until tomorrow’s new decline.

Redefining marriage is the path to anarchy

Brad Delong has a fantastic takedown of the right’s hand-wringing about marriage. National Review talks lovingly of Athenian philosophers and uses them to oppose Teh Gay, which is … well, let’s just not go there.

But seriously, this argument that changing marriage is putting us on the road to anarchy? Just rewind a couple hundred years and imagine the same tale:

Marriage has always and forever been one thing and one thing only: A sacred contract between a husband and his fathers-in-law, whereby a girl ceases to be the property of her father and becomes the property of her husband, subservient to the prior wives in the marriage. And a marriage like this is a key means of cementing tribal alliances and settling blood debts.

Yes, it may seem unfair to make these arrangements without the consent of the bride, but this is the way things have always been done, and it is the way they must continue to be done. Why, if we could not settle a blood debt by giving a daughter away as chattel, how could we end a vendetta? Without chattel marriage, anarchy and murder would reign!

Dog Walking, Draft 7

I gave this girl a human name, and call it softly;
Ape the role, though I’m no father.
This ersatz child diverts
my nurture to her needs,
will never care for me in frailty
or carry on my name.
Commensal more than parasite,
she shares the prey
she captures with her infant paws:
The smiles of disarmed passers-by
which I imagine are for me.