The Zingara Project

Tag: Poems with Dogs

  • A letter to Campbell McGrath about Polaroids at a yard sale by Ralph Long Jr.

    Campbell

    An unleashed Dalmatian is never a good idea at a
    yard sale. Barking chaos, toppled tables, a box of
    Polaroids scattered. Bow-tied boys, girls in print
    dresses, squinting Sunday-best parents strewn like
    autumn leaves on the still-green lawn. A woman
    chases the errant dog. Her daughter guards the cash
    box, offers me the photos for a nickel each if I spare
    her the chore of picking them up. She finds no value
    in the once-precious moments that are fading into
    chimera as chemicals decay. Edwin Land’s promised
    hundred years of color already spectral. There are no
    images worthy of Adams’ Yosemite or Wegman’s
    Weimaraners. A few arcade booth strips amid the
    mess capture a vitality, a reality missing in the others.
    I don’t know what happened to all the old photos of
    my family. I wonder if the parents in these ones are
    still arguing about the thermostat, children, television
    channels. Or if the photos are the detritus of divorce,
    death? Do you think this LBJ era ephemera is worthy
    of preservation when so much else is disappearing?

    I bought a dollar’s worth of photos, I can’t say why.

    —
    Ralph J. Long Jr. is the author of the chapbook, A Democracy Divided (The Poetry Box, 2018). His work has appeared in Stoneboat Literary Journal, The Poeming Pigeon, The Avocet and the anthology Ambrosia: A Conversation About Food. He graduated from Haverford College and lives in Oakland California.

  • Walking an Old Dog by Lisa Chavez

    we rest more
    often. His eyes clouded
    with cataracts,
    hearing dulled
    so he startles
    sometimes.  His hips sway
    with ache, but he
    whiffles his way
    through a scent rich world.

    Walks are shorter, slower
    and even I see
    more–the caterpillar’s
    circuitous journeys,
    the pinon cones
    opening like fists
    dropping their treasure.
    We pause
    to look or sniff.
    Then head home,
    the sun behind us
    like the span of his years
    and our shadows
    thinning to fade,

    lengthening
    toward the end
    of the day.

    —

    Lisa D. Chavez has published two books of poetry, Destruction Bay and In An Angry Season. Her essays have appeared in Arts and Letters, The Fourth Genre and other magazines, and in anthologies including The Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity, and An Angle of Vision:  Women Writers on their Poor and Working Class Roots.  She grew up in Alaska and currently lives in New Mexico, and has a keen interest in Japanese dogs and in perfume. Find her online at lisadchavez.com