the death of a dog
has always
hit me harder
than the death
of a human.
for instance
these
sweet old ladies
staring back at me
from the
sunday obituaries:
they earned it somehow
they were culpable
in some fashion.
more importantly
they all knew
the movie
had an end.
//for the record//
do you
make this
stuff up?
i'm regularly asked
via email.
well,
maybe it was a
squash-racket handle
instead of a
broomstick
she asked me
to shove
up her
clam-meat
and those
dump trucks
from the rock quarry
i felt compelled
to jump in front of
when i was twelve:
maybe they
were blue
not red.
sometimes
the incidentals do
shape-shift
within reason
during the friction
of the process.
but i'll
tell you
this:
if i ever
get the
million little pieces
magnifying-glass treatment
i won't come out
a fraud.
a
natural-idiot
maybe
but not
a fraud.
Justin Hyde lives in Iowa where he works with criminals. He has a web-page here: http://www.nyqpoets.net/poet/justinhyde.
