Standard Poodle

(anthologized in the improbable book Psychic Projections of Domestic Pets)

Everywhere I go I bring violence,
a savage mongrel snapping at my heels.
Last night at the bar, two young women yanked
each other’s hair as grandmothers might tug

dandelions from a spring lawn. A man
with too much white hair screamed and smashed his fist
into a non-compliant parking metre.
He continued to scream as I walked off.

A week before writing to tell you this,
two white men with clubs broke a black man’s arms
at the door to the mall. I shrieked, “Stop that!”
and called 9-1-1 from a safe distance.

Ever since that Doberman with billiard balls
for gonads mounted my neutered poodle,
I can’t take my dog off-leash in the park
without saving the neck of some terrified

terrier from my shamed real dog’s grinding jaws.
Now I leave him behind when I go walking.
His disobedient shadow follows.
Unleashed, violence increases its strength.

Brown Mackerel Tabby

(anthologized in the improbable book Psychic Projections of Domestic Pets)

Inside my cat the soul of a mother
cries for her unborn children.

In the prison of her upstairs rooms
she mewls to be fed and comforted.

She dabs my chin with cotton swabs
of declawed front paws, one for each

never-conceived kitten of a litter.
If she knew how much I’d sacrifice

for absolution, would she be content
to knead my chest and wake me

with her small, idling chainsaw engine?

Stephen Brockwell is an Ottawa poet and small business owner. His book Fruitfly Geographic won the Archibald Lampman award. His fifth book of poems, The Complete Surprising Fragments of Improbable Books will soon be published by Mansfield Press.

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