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Numbed with self-loathing,
we abandon the emissaries
of grace. Chained to a tree

beside the empty rental
she hollowed out a den
for herself & her young.

By the time we found her
the water they'd left her
was a couple of days gone.

When the water was gone
she would have slept, not dreaming,
letting the pups nurse

her sparse milk & when
the smallest died she ate it to keep
her strength & cleanse the den,

depriving coy dogs & foxes
an expedient scent.
It's likely there were two more

before we found her.
Ribs covered by a tissue of dry skin,
she was nothing—a shadow

on the dirt & was just able
to raise her head & take
a little water from my hand

before turning to nose
her three live pups awake.
Reader, it is true, there is

horror everywhere worse
than this & cruelty that beggars
imagination, but this

is local & particular; these were
my neighbors did this,
who, without even the excuse

of psychosis, committed this wrong.
Who live in this same light
& shadow I live in.

Let us kill one another
with heedless abandon—we deserve it—
but not these poor relations

whose lives are without malice
& whose motives are transparent.
Let us kill one another.

JOSEPH DUEMER'S Magical Thinking won the 2001 Ohio State University Press/The Journal Award in Poetry.   He is associate Professor of Humanities in the School of Liberal Arts, Clarkson University.  His books include Fool's Paradise and The Light of Common Day.  His work has appeared in The American Literary Review, The American Poetry Review, Salt, FIELD, 5 AM, The Georgia Review and his translations of Ten Vietnamese Poets is the Feature centerpiece of Poetry International Vol V 2001.

Click here to read more poetry by Joseph Duemer in ForPoetry.com

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