Exercise Post. Week One.

Rooting For Dogs
Sunday, May 16, 2010

I root for dogs padding through dewy yards at dawn. The lowed head dogs, nose thrust toward the night’s footfalls, trotting with an urgency as though tugged by the brush of weeping rope at their neck, pulled by bent-link drag of chain. I commend dogs sniffing and spraying cached streams of urine over light poles, tires, hearty clumps of grass, a child’s dump truck, things that for that morning seem as though they could be theirs.

I applaud the dogs whose rose petal belly has scraped the morning damp earth, whose chest is a hackle of matted mud teeth; dogs who have pawed all night at the catch of gate or the clay beneath the fence. The dogs carrying the guilt of all dogs in their hunch. Dogs that glower with eyes like moon on a midnight pond as they hasten with joyous lolling tongues; tongues like flapping red flags of dissent.

The lone mutts snuffling up sidewalks towards bilious white piñatas, they know that they are bad dogs. Bad dog! Bad dog! Bad dog! An still they shamble to those decadently effluvial sacks that will burst like melons, that will spill butter-moist crusts, bones still clinched with flesh, heavy putrid diapers. They will flutter that little red flag over whiskered chops, in and around cellophane wrappers, sticky paper towels, coagulated lumps on tinfoil. There will be no discrimination among dogs.

They will grin and pant and run with the slam of the door, like teenagers after festooning the school in toilet paper, flee as incandescent as caught lovers. With glee and guilt they will return to chain-link fences, to kennels, to tethered stakes. And for a few moments they will have owned the morning as dogs can.




Job Description
Tuesday, May 18, 2010

I nestle the rubber and canvas shoes in an old drawer, poised like sand dollars or a bed of oysters and tied in pairs with twine, they will go places I never will. Every few minutes I straighten the other vessels of leather, rubber, canvas, wood and cork. I straighten the laces like a mother smoothing a child’s curled collar before sending them out the door.

The shoes perch like patient birds on the wood and wrought iron shoe trees. Some alight upon tall, delicate, leather-wrapped heels, the sole an elegant inclination, they are the summertime beauties. Their soft taupe, swan, and dove-hued leather wings will enfold the feet of brides.

Fanned upon another shelf, pumps and flats display their bold contours, anomalous designs, and rant of color like the specimens of a tropical aviary. Some squat on bubbly, squashed heels others crawl into a gentle webbing across the ankle. These shoes’ flights will be on dance floors, over chic urban blocks, lunch dates.

I straighten the stout clogs, the sexy kitten heels, the organic sandals the color of reeds, fowl, and soil. For a season they are my kittens in a box, my graduating pupils. Soon the will walk out into worlds I will never know. For now, I must straighten and primp. Tie laces. Buckle and button. Straighten. Straighten…