Jeremy
Donna Pucciani, Ph.D.
I hold him in my arms at the vet’s,
Alone in a room reserved
For the final injection, his warm
Schnauzer-body quieting into heaviness,
Then slipped him, vinyl-bagged,
Into the back seat among blankets,
Cookie crumbs, the ice scraper.
Lori had sniffled in her teenage way,
“Nobody’s going to kill my dog,”
And Jim had simply gone off to work;
So I patted him into the car,
Carried him like a lamb to the slaughter,
Kissed his curly-grey ears.
For weeks I’d watched him
Fall off the back steps, walk into walls,
The tragicomic figure of a canine
Losing its mind. Poor little clown
Went outside to poop, couldn’t remember how,
His senile eyes blank as a jester’s bells,
Tail wagging slowly in vague recognition,
Then not at all.
We buried him in the back yard
The wet afternoon at the foot of the garden,
But the hole was too small
And the stuffed vinyl bag stuck up
In the shape of his ass;
As we lifted him out to deepen the grave,
The carcass slid out in a frigid lump,
And we cried in the rain
And worked with out shovels
To finish the job before dark.
