‘Canine Litmus’ and other poems
By: Christine Naprava
Canine Litmus
I’ve owned dogs that have lasted longer than you and I.
Dogs with nervous guts and singing skin,
dogs with weight and dogs with ribs visible,
dogs with teeth bared and dogs with teeth drowning in decay.
Dogs born with death already attached
and dogs whose expiration exceeded that of the kid
I babysat when I was a kid.
Dogs that have met the baby,
the baby’s baby.
Dogs that have seen death in the living room
and, a year later, death in the bedroom.
Dogs that have swum and dogs that have sunk.
Dogs that have mothered and dogs that have fathered.
Dogs that have gone silently, in the night,
and dogs that have gone cold under the doctor’s care.
Dogs that have met you with telling opposition
and dogs that have never had to cower beneath your touch.
###
Matryoshka
The glass tasted
good
at first,
like all
first things
do,
sweet,
smooth as
riverbed stone,
and then
the glass
began to taste
like
forgetting how
to breathe.
Forgetting how to
breathe
in Mother’s car
before school,
a braver-faced
me
than the me
who wept
and refused
to believe
that the body knew
what to do
when
sleep conquered
the wired
mind.
Forgetting how to
breathe
tasted like
forgetting how to eat.
Subsisting on fruit
and even-numbered
repetitions,
a lean eighty-five
by freshman year,
a doted-on
sort of affliction
that needed only
an addict’s
affection.
I can taste the glass
now,
dream glass
in flying shards,
and I can taste the
child’s lungs,
filled at recess
and
gasping for air
by bedtime,
and I can taste the
thick-skinned
apples
washed down
with water
cold enough to
stun the lungs.
The glass
has become
an ex’s chirping birds,
the origin of his
melatonin addiction,
and the breathing
has become
the inability
to form a
thought
when a blank
stare will not
suffice,
and the
forgetting how
to eat−
I know nothing of it.
Now I eat too well.
###
Every Woman Is a Model Now
A too-generous angle
tainted with sacrilege−
Godspell,
in waves of
orange and black,
in both our
peripheries,
a showy exhibition
of faith,
an embarrassment,
except this theater major
only has eyes for
what’s pink and peach
and all mine.
A form of God
over my shoulder
and on my left,
out of the
camera’s gaze,
Saint Francis,
son of man,
born of wood,
with carved eyes narrowed
and bird in hand,
the patron saint of all animals
with no time for this animal.
This animal
retreats to
bathrooms
on command,
camera in hand,
but really the camera
is all of our phones
held unsurely
in shaking,
desperate hands.
Dimmed lights,
a three-second timer,
a forgiving filter
dated on left side.
16 oz. of cream
for a stand,
phone propped,
bare or nearly bare−
when nearly bare,
he’s given choice.
He chooses all:
the pink, the purple,
the whites,
the grays.
Objects in mirror
may appear larger
than they really are:
What I give him
or what he sees
while scrolling,
he’s deceived
like the rest of us.
Approved of
and sent,
not approved of
and a change of angles
is in order.
Holding breath
while sucking in,
tense muscles
as impossible positions
are held in place.
A sink for a seat,
an awkward
hand thrown
awkwardly
out of frame.
This animal dresses
hurriedly
and retreats
from bathrooms
until the next time,
admiring,
as with all creations,
what’s no longer hers:
a few flecks of purple
in a sea of red.
Every woman,
I realize,
is a model now−
muses esteemed
in private galleries
and muses gawked at
by the masses,
we are all
curated delicacies
trapped
within frigid,
thirsty
glances.