The Dogs, The Dust: Open

By Tamara Panici

Issue 47 • Spring 2023 • Poetry

in the earth he digs through fall searching /out last year’s bone…

see him rotting in a shady alley / how the grass

grows through his ribs / a rake of eternal passage…

particles spreading up in the stars / from where

with this same wonder / he barks back at you –

Gabriel Decuble

___________

Uncle says, Mother says,

(the silence says,)

We had to kill the dogs.

They rummaged through our garden, chewed and swallowed our vegetables.

Who are we without a few beans in our bellies? Without a ripe tomato in our guts?

(It is true people will eventually eat anything to stay alive.)

The dogs deserved to die the same as anyone deserves death.

It took hours or days. Days in line for handful of dust.

A bag of mysterious grey pulp.

We put the sludge on the smallest fire

on the oven that worked harder than

our country to feed fourteen mouths.

(Our bones never warm though our

souls burn with the hunger for

another day lived.)

We made traps with barbed wire, pulleys, and heavy rocks.

Sometimes we used old car batteries.

Always there was nothing at the end of the line.

(At the end of the line, you see there is nothing but a crying

mother. A bloated corpse. No, not a corpse, a boy.)

When the dog falls into the trap, the weight comes down and pins his body.

Then we slit his throat. The blood poured as we prayed.

Death provoked us to kill

or run.

I whispered nothing

in front of my neighbors and

friends, my mother.

Before I ran,

I was silent.

(Everyone is here.)

(Some are hidden in the ground or sky.)

(Open your hands. Open your eyes.)

(Open every bone and bruise.)

(Open your head.)

(Open.)

(God has left you with the bodies.)

Tamara Panici

Tamara Panici’s works have appeared or are forthcoming in places like POETRY, Muzzle Magazine, Third Coast, Waxwing, Denver Quarterly, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the Margaret Reid Poetry Prize, the Black Warrior Review Poetry Prize, and the River Styx Microfiction Prize. She has been a finalist for the Ruth Lilly and Dorthy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her partner and their child, and their child-to-be.

Josephine Florens

Josephine Florens is a professional oil painter. Was born in Odessa, Ukraine on September 22, 1988. Lives in Bad Grönenbach, Germany, as there is a war going on in Ukraine. Graduated from Odessa National Academy of Law and received a Master’s degree in Civil Law , graduated from Odessa International Humanitarian University and received a Master’s degree in International Law. She started painting in 2017. She studied individually at the Art-Ra school of painting. Josephine Florens is a member of the National Association of Artists and Sculptors of Ukraine, member of the Odessa Marine Union, Ukraine, honorary member of the Union of World’s Poets and Writers. Creates oil paintings in various genres, such as portrait, landscape, still life, genre painting, animal painting, marina. Works with oil paints. Calls her direction of painting as modern vintage. Website is https://josephineflorens.com.