for Gertrude Stein

Dogs meant buried treasure then dig em’ up later all new. No, no, no, no, no. Good dog. What have you done, dog? Bad dog. Never a dumb dog. When I was younger, the only one I could trust was you. Your chilled nuzzle and hot breath on my eyelids after girls down the street insisted I remove my shoes and parade around in marshmallow flames and feces. Dog, I was dog. I knew dog before I knew not dog. I knew quiet and hum and lap it up when it was fat and stale and salty. All because of you.

They said they would put you down, dog. It was time, they said, she is old, they said. Blind and arthritic and senile. Down, down, down, dog. You could no longer walk. You could no longer ask for the door to be opened. You peed on the floor, but you weren’t a bad dog, just a sad dog, a dying dog gone, dog. It’s going to be harder for me than it is for you, they said. She slept under my chair, they said. She was my first wife, they said. She gave me the space to read and think. All that quiet devotion.

I felt safe inside your scruff, dancing in leg warmers to falsetto. How were my moves? I would ask you. Are they any good? Yes, your eyes would say. Good enough.

I cried and I cried and I cried for you, dog.

Effortless love seemed impossible without packing into your musk.

Shake it off. Your domestic confinement, your unmet desire to chase dangers for kindly rewards, your here I am, and I see you better than you see yourself. Slumped and broken, denying your wild and my own with the squeak of a stuffed hedgehog.

Shake it off. You itch. You scratch. Fleas nip. Ticks bite. Floors click under your claws. Your tail thumps walls until bleeding. I primp. I brush. Floss molars. Clip nails with metal teeth. Who do I look like to you, dog? Who do you look like to you?

You dog, versus us dog. Someone says your ferocity is more prominent but it’s only because of us, dog. You bite because it’s what your bloodline says. To the bone, the a snap of marrow. Our mouths are not dissimilar. I crave the crunch of potato chips and the gnaw of jerky, and it takes little effort to get there. Only a trip to 7-11 in high heels.

I refuse to correct your posture with meaty nuggets. I will not give you antidepressants, or cover your busts in faux feline. Nor will I parade you around on bedazzled stages, and applaud only you, you, you, dog, versus us, us, us, dog. Obnoxious shedders, putrid flatulators, bad breath expellers, incessant snugglers, follow me arounders, poop leavers, death diggers, rodent murderers, oily pelters. Bred to be clean. Bred to be neat. Bred to behave around children and fish and felines. Human hair-like-fur dogs. Mudless pawed, dogs. Scentless shit, dogs. Go dog, go. Fetch dog, fetch. Sit dog, sit. Paw dog, paw. Now please lick it up, my mess.

In many moods, some despondent and woebegone, you tug me through rain and sleet without hesitation. It seems, dog, you don’t lack curiosity based on graying skies or slopped puddles. Thank you for getting me wet.

Sniff left, dog, sniff right, dog. You know the dogs before you and cover them up in you, dog. You dog are not me dog. I’m dog before you dog. I could learn to laze in the shade and shake dreams off for hours. I could tongue the faces of my fellow species. I could nibble their cheeks and wrap my forepaws around readying rumps.

My human brings out your human. Your dog brings out my dog. I’m your dog. You’re my human.

You were theirs, then mine. Mine by proxy, not mine at all. No one’s. You belong to yourself. No leash. No lead. Open the back door and find your way until our whistles carry you home. Good dog.

I held up a mirror and you didn’t budge, but when my voice came onto the radio you sniffed around for my shape. Someone said you could smell a dead goose a mile away. Someone said your ears would perk up at the sound of Judy Garland. Someone who thinks they are more intelligent than you, dog, said you were more intelligent than other critters because you could play dominos with them, but still lose every time.

You see, someone said to me once, I can only trust certain types of dogs. Some of them could snap at any minute, some of them could in one minute, lick a face hello, then a minute later, chew a face goodbye. Dogs are dogs are beasts. When you die, someone once said, dogs will first eat your toes.

What is most surprising about wildness is when it reveals itself after you thought you shook it off, long ago.

The nose knows. The nose of a dog can smell our nose a mile away and our nose is also a dead goose. When you smell like a dog can smell, nothing smells bad, just possible.

You were a puppy and you lived under a bridge and camped in packs and howled occasionally when the mood was lunar. Do dogs in cities howl like dogs in countries? I don’t know what makes a dog howl, maybe they’re tapping into their wolf through a prehistoric aria. Maybe they’re onto us, the pent up calls that fester inside our bodies, our steady grip on upstanding behavior.

I would see you dogs of Varanasi wandering the streets, eating dhal, stopping only to nip at your sores. Gangs of yellow fur, stained by diesel and incense smoke. And you dogs of Brooklyn doused in honeysuckle pet shampoo, coiffed in curls, tails lopped off at birth. You dogs of DaNang were slightly shorter in the legs and sturdier in the jaw, leashes on because otherwise you might become an old time delicacy for rice farmers.

You Valdavian dogs were yellow and black and you both looked vaguely Labradorian, with brown paw pads and contoured incisors. Nothing derailed your stare or your inhalation of my groin, my rump, my morning mouth. Eager to please, to feed and follow. I was alone most of the time, and to keep myself company, I learned to speak you, dog. We ate tilapia and potatoes and blackberries. Plates on the floor, meandering walks after dinner, two miles down to the rio for starbaths. Sure there were flees and the smell of dead life on your coat, but I still packed up next to you at night to stay warm.

You chewed into the faces of other dogs with more vigor. You were too excitable and so you needed to have a time out, which meant standing to the side inside a gate for approximately five minutes. No rewards. You could have known everything, but no one asked because they assumed their role was a larger one.

You are not wolf, dog. You know your place in cupboards and meat freezers. How you stepped into the threshold of human I don’t know. No one knows. Not really. You chose to be helpful. Maybe you assumed two legs could assist your four. Maybe you assumed you were cleverer than I am. I will not disagree. I say go and you go, dog. You say stop and I stop, dog. You work the sheep. You steer the steer. I stoke the fire. For you, dog.

Felicity Fenton’s stories and essays have been featured in Fanzine, Split Lip Press, Wigleaf, The Iowa Review, Pidgeonholes, The Denver Quarterly, The Masters Review, Passages North, X-R-A-Y, Pank (forthcoming), and others. Her book, ‘User Not Found’ was published by Future Tense Books in December, 2018. She lives in Portland, Oregon.