Skip to content →

Category: Michael Collier

His Highness' Dog at Kew

That’s who I am, pampered, well fed,

trampling slack-leashed into the beds,

blooming or not, depositing my turds

and sprinkling the tulip stalks

whose buds are like the bud I lick.

And though I look like a dust mop,

a four-legged moustache, trim my bangs,

and as fierce as an Assyrian sight hound,

I’ll find my way back to Peritas or La Vega Real,

snout wet with the gore of human bowel.

But for now a squeaky, annoying yap

warns as well as a mastiff’s bark.

Truth is, I’m weightless in a lap

and, on a cold day, I like a cardigan,

at night, a stiff brush, all of which

sharpens the loneliness I feel.

So that’s who I am

and now if you don’t mind, tell me,

whose dog are you.

from Poetry Northwest 08.2 Fall & Winter 2013-2014More by Michael Collier from the library

Copyright © Michael Collier
Used with the permission of the author
on behalf of Poetry Northwest.

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council, a State-based program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this (publication, website, exhibit, etc.) do not necessarily represent those of the Idaho Humanities Council or the National Endowment for the Humanities.