PS: Your Poem a Week w/ Philippe Shils

42. Virus airport dog

9/27/2020

42. Virus airport dog

Covidog
asks
is this
power

What is
this
power

Your
pet
pets
pet

Is
learned
leaning
very virus
scenting

Different
from
seizure
eye dog

Wagging
virus pat

To the
park
to
the pack
we
go for
relief

Not to the airport
Not to the store
Not to the show
no no
no

We can
all do it
I mean
smell the virus
I mean
get the ball
I mean
smell the virus
I mean
get the virus
I mean

#weeklypoemandpic

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41. 3 dog poems

9/25/2020

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1
don't
despair
dear wife

there is a
cow gentle
soft
tongued

dog on
our roof
snapping
at birds

about whom
the neighbor
called
my work

concerned
for our dog
but not
the birds

2
our basset isn't like
a toddler unaware
of his bad haircut.
he likes his bad haircut.
his middle name is wallow.
grace of a fish
but a catfish.
every three weeks or
so he writes a letter
to the editor.
there's rolling of the eyes.
his missives are always
the same: complaints
about the park district,
the state of the roads,
how loud kids
are nowadays, windfarms.
the usual outrage. when the
paper comes that day
he barks and barks.

3
I'm under the back steps
with my dog.

He spent the day there.
It's lonely like the

time I slept in a
field across from a

house. It
was cold and the

porch
light kept me half awake.

There are leaves and dirt
but mostly there's fur.

This is where we've gone to
dream and to twitch and

to bite one another's cheeks
and smooth one another's faces.

Oily nose to dusty nose. That's
how we were.

He's been drinking and drinking
and throwing up clear

so we keep the toilet lids down
and hope

for the best or the
worst. Not the in between.

He went under the culvert once.
There had

been a flood and he
was fetching sticks. He

went into a
drain and bobbed up on the

other
side like a cork.
He snatched frisbees

out of the
air like plates off a shelf.

Bury me
under the back porch
steps with my dog.

We can be
there together next to the

cool foundation of the house.

It's a place nobody looks. It's
a place everyone finds.

#weeklypoemandpic

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40. medicinal

9/19/2020

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40. medicinal

the pill that he
took showed him

how it felt to climb over
the green mountain

and swim the
brown river clothed

to cross a border of
fences and weeds.

anything to get here
where he was already.

he looked around winded
wondering about

the things he’d collected
and the wives he’d left

and was homesick for
for the village he’d been

trying to come home to
when he took the pill.
#weeklypoemandpic

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39. Remote learning

9/16/2020

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39. Remote learning

Conjugate:
to watch

something
ripen

Syllabify:
godisarabbit
godisatree

Sequence:
falling
hatched
broken

flight
verge

Diagram:
the small trees
that
are larger

the old trees
that

seem
the same
as they were

until the
winter

Story problem:
when does the
sparrow

petrify to
wood

and that
branch
turn to stone

Geography:
a puzzle
containing

smugglers
pirates

candle profiteers
\
grief capitalists

Music:
the rattle of
january
leaves
in a northern
state

#weeklypoemandpic

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