China Dogs

[Jingdezhen]

‘Bout the time you leave a

dog appears—bounding ‘tween the wood wheels

of ware carts bearing triumphant stacks of

many hundred porcelain things.

Dog, I call her.

I say look at you, little dog.

Look at me as I arrange my lips to whistle

and call out your name: 

Dog! Thweeeeeeeet! Come ‘er, girl! Dog!

Ha! You don’t know me

but you come at me straight up! 

(An unspoken dog-to-dog scenario)—

as a tangled coat of oily bristle hairs, spent

treading paths

through kaolin

sidestreets

(no doubt stopping at every fortuitous smell to sniff)

in hot damn pursuit

of a fresh patch of sun,

a duck carcass, 

or chicken bits,

now whipping wild tunnel at my fingertips—

I scratch your ears and underbelly

and back, back

to ears and underbelly. 

I notice the bell on your neck. 

No? Ok. 

You barking stuntdog action hero—

catching sharp breeze in your nose,

barrow roll back to parallel in

a biplane playing dogfight,

and run—

I s’pose I’ll catch you later, dog,

so long as the wind rolls back this way…

And it does, as summer and weather patterns and things allow:

here, it's in the between of

hollow howls by disgruntled mutts

in their alien towns of thin bitches, 

sires, and dams irking at every swinging 

tail or turned-over stone. Where dogs

so pregnant their eyes bulge. Teets drag. Exhausted. 

Like there’s no more room. 

Not for a dog with a bell on her neck. 

Yet, you’re somewhere here:

a celestial incarnation of some indistinguishable thing,

like the pure forces that bind 

dog to ball,

or me to dog,

or me to you. 

Even clay to this city

which reminds me,

drinking a warm beer (a surprising Proud Sponsor 

of the NBA), explaining to someone how 

the town sounds like a basketball 

dribbled thrice with some intent in the middle:

Jing dah! Jen

Or like a dog’s bell 

never seen after 

this morning when I

woke acute to the casual sound 

of smoker chokes, smell of burning plastic, leaves, 

and (always) dirt. 

The dead things of autumn—

my dog stripped of her bell

on the street,

is it really you? Yes— dying 

with little bouncy ball breaths

pat pat pat...pat pat pat... pat pat pat...

Or it that the song in your head?

Someone said much later you were poisoned 

for causing something precious to break.