I. Rabies
Rabies ain’t nothin’
but a share-
cropper, moving
from place to place—
in fact, it’s
use to make-do
starts from scratch
and ravening
bites into a poor shack
of dogtrot flesh
barely hid
from the shiftless sun.
It hauls its sorry self
from wound
to cell to chain-
link spine and brain—
which takes
some squat and nerve—
never once settlin’ long.
That little
piece of shit (shaped
like a bullet, and that’s
the god-
damned truth) will
even make you feared
of rain—
which you begged
the blank heavens for
all your
live-long days, till
some stray dog you
kept, fed,
and friended turned
mad on the swept
yard and
brought all your
weevil-plagued dreams
to a wagon-
load of grub-et waste.
II. Bite One
Ironically, the dog
that bit me
first was a stray pet
named Smiley.
I still have a B&W
photo of us
in the flower box
built from lumber scraps
around the pecan tree
outside our house—
because every
God-believin’ soul
needs some spring pretty
to raise hope
when daffodils push up
from buried bulbs.
I am two, dressed
in a white Carter’s
Fox Cap / Sleep-&-Play
like a little
astronaut suited for his
ride to the moon.
The black
band of derelict fur
that stretches over
Smiley’s face makes a lanky
canine Clayton Moore.
The one eye
I can barely see
seems to say, I’m sorry
for the coming bite
and blood,
for the lunar madness
in my brain, the fourteen
deep-muscle shots
in your gut—
sorry for all the strange
ways this crazy place
can blast you
straight off the earth.
III. Bite Two
The second time, at five,
it was a cat.
I have no memory of this—
not like the dog,
which put the fear of God
of dogs in me
for years to come. I know
my Uncle C. J.
scoured fields and barns
for days, for fur,
for carcass, when naught
could be found.
So, another round of shots
in the belly,
of screams, of dragging me
to the car,
of holding me down on the steel
table like a soul
who saw no light at the end
of the tunnel,
who could not shake flesh
loose and be free
of all the teeth and needles
that pierced him
with unnameable, unwanted
vengeance and mercy,
through and through, to a pain
that weren’t nothing new.
IV. Crazy
I got the crazy
from my mom. She had visions
and heard voices.
She saved scores
of people from tragic accidents
just by seeing
them in her head
and taking it to the Lord.
We were close.
Of course, a lot
of people tried to kill her
too, which means
being a kid
was complicated—always
on the look-
out for her
moods. She was a spotter
for the Aircraft
Warning Service
in 1942—Eyes, Aloft!
Sometimes, I
imagine her—poor,
thin, and tense in a pitch-black
South Georgia
cornfield—
pencil, log, and silhouette
flashcards
in hand.
She is meticulous, clear-
headed, keen,
astute—waiting
for the inexorable enemy
to come.
