By Vincent O’Sullivan
I’m in charge of a cage. I know those that won’t.
I don’t mean can’t. Just won’t. There’s a roster
for Tuesdays, Fridays. Dogs to die.
The disconsolate, the abandoned, those with recurrent
symptoms, the incorrigible mutt — oh, a dozen
choices by way of reasons. Even so,
some won’t. Won’t play along once their number’s
up. The “rainbow bridge” in the offing
as the posher clinics put it, a pig’s ear
as a final treat, a venison chew, the profession
behaving beautifully at a time like this.
Still, those that won’t. Won’t go nicely, I mean,
with a gaze to melt, a last slobbed lick.
Those with a soul’s defiance, though embarrassment
in the lunchroom should you come at that one!
Even after the bag is zipped, you feel it:
We’re real at the end as you are, buster. We sniff
the wind. What say if we say it together? Won’t.
Source: Poetry (February 2018)
Poet Bio
Vincent O’Sullivan lives in Dunedin and is a novelist, short story writer, biographer, playwright, and poet. He was New Zealand Poet Laureate 2013–2015.
More Poems about Living
Vagrants and Loiterers
You got that clean waistcoat,
the bright white of a well-tailored
shirt, you got those loose-as-sacks
slacks and some spit-polished shoes,
and you know, whether you are looking
like money, or about to take a stroll,
to tilt that hat like you own
the world; yeah, smoke...
What Women Are Made Of
We are all ventricle, spine, lung, larynx, and gut.
Clavicle and nape, what lies forked in an open palm;
we are follicle and temple. We are ankle, arch,
sole. Pore and rib, pelvis and root
and tongue. We are wishbone and gland and molar
and...
More Poems about Nature
What Women Are Made Of
We are all ventricle, spine, lung, larynx, and gut.
Clavicle and nape, what lies forked in an open palm;
we are follicle and temple. We are ankle, arch,
sole. Pore and rib, pelvis and root
and tongue. We are wishbone and gland and molar
and...
White Box
Of Tribulation, these are They,
Denoted by the White.
— Emily Dickinson
Pained, permanent
wakefulness
Exposed
in the split geode
a Santa’s grotto
Jagged milk
quartz crusts
constitute
every surface —
a mouth
all teeth
self-sharpening
like sea urchins’ —
“Uncomfortably beautiful”
toughened glass
spikes
in the doorways
of award-
winning offices
— rough
sleepers from the womb
condemned
to make of anything succulent
rock
of porticoes
iron maidens