Dog Shit
Paul Hostovsky
I like to watch him sniff around for the perfect
place to void. I think this is the poetry of place
in his aesthetic universe, which is small but
surely very deeply felt. Look how discriminating
he is: Here. No, here. No. On second thought,
here. The same delicate choices you might make
in a poem. A poem about dog shit. He is brutally
honest as he turns and turns, shifts, lifts the inky
feather quill of his tail and quiveringly, yet firmly
makes his mark, his nose in the wind, his eyes
tender, elsewhere, his mind on something I can’t
read from here because it’s already leaping ahead
to the next thought, the next scent, scene, figure,
landscape, the next new chapter, the next great poem.
