S. Thomas Summers

Dialogue Between Rescued Dogs

if your master’s boy gets
bullied because he still
rubs his fingers between
his blanket’s silk edges when
he sleeps over at billy stillman’s
house you could scratch on
billy’s house beneath his window
at night while he’s sleeping
while moonlight shakes shadows
from sticks and trees outside
billy’s window and when billy
peeks through the glass you
can growl from the brush wrapped
in night     growl like you once growled
when all you knew was blood and cold
and beer bottles breaking on your skull
tossed by boys like billy     bad boys
who hurt and hate and need to bleed
and fear and hide beneath cold stones
and hide and hurt and bleed

Gas Station Men’s Room—RTE 17, Paramus, NJ

Mold’s begun to scale white, concrete walls—
sin across a soul. Condoms float in puddles
of toilet water brined with piss—skin of eel
and squid. This is a place to drown.
Sticky heat seeps through cracks, under door.

The hieroglyphics of pornography festoon
the room. Drizzles of blood scale the garbage can—
an open grave of newborn puppies. One still
hungers for mother’s milk. Its struggle toils
against the weight of brothers. This is a drowning place.

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