Recorded Books Inc. - Shelter

SHELTER 2016 by Carey Salerno All rights reserved Alice James Books are published by Alice James Poetry Cooperative, Inc., an affiliate of the University of Maine at Farmington. Alice James Books 114 Prescott Street Farmington, ME 04938 www.alicejamesbooks.org eISBN: 978-1-938584-91-6 Cover art: Gavin Will, 2dogs 2005 by Gavin Will, www.gavinwill.me.uk Courtesy of the artist N OTE TO THE R EADER Alice James Books encourages you to calibrate your e-reader device settings using the line of characters below as a guide, which optimizes the line length and character size: taking hold of the body. In the beginning, I wouldnt understand Please take the time to adjust the size of the text on your viewer so the line of characters above appears on one line, if possible. Doing this will most accurately reproduce the layout of the text intended by the author. Viewing the title at a higher than optimal text size or on a device too small to accomodate the lines in the text will cause the reading experience to be altered considerably; single lines of some poems may be displayed as multiple lines of text. If this occurs, the line break will be marked with a shallow indent.

FOR DAN AND FOR MY GRANDFATHER Acknowledgments Asylum received Honorable Mention for the Rattle 2006 Poetry Prize and appeared (in an earlier version) in Rattle, Winter 2006. Gratitude to my family, the editors, fellow Alices, and staff of AJB; and to my Henniker mentors, friends, and classmates all of whom have graced me with tremendous inspiration and guidance. Table of Contents

FLEDGLING Tina fastens the needle, barrel blue to lcc. A dose we divide for seven kittens. I pinch one by the scruff. Hind legs scrunch to haunches; he hangs, a sack of bones.

We turn from the purple carrier, backs to the mother, guttural moan. Kittens, velvet skeletons, wither in my hands, cumbersome skulls drooping without muscle. Their tongues strain to brush ashen noses then slacken, knock against loose jaws unmasking porcelain, pushpin teeth. Tina rustles out a garbage bag, inhales sterile plastic. I drop in kittens, some not yet dead, cull more juice and hoist mother. I wrap fingers like tape on legs, stretching her urine-damp body.

She doesnt fight as Tina draws closer, knowing the angle at which to pierce a heart. WHITE WOLF There are dogs going mad after a few days in kennel rows. Rottweilers mostly, we give them three days tops until restless kennel legs jump them in circles, barge torsos at rusted pen doors. Their anemic lips snarl at offers to play outside and we say time upfearing wet jaws. Shes the same and we name her Suisse, purebred Blanc Berger, white and striking, unspayed. Snow ushers her in because she isnt good with children, has a slight food aggression problem, though we hold her for breeds rescue.

I chaperone her in our courtyard and she runs me like a slave, growling when I escort her indoors. If other dogs are brought to play, a flash of teeth. The diva dog wont let me pet or touch her bristled coat when I slip the braided blue lead onto her neck, noticing as she prances back to her cell the gleam of her yellow eye, the way wet soil rises up ivory legs. A SURRENDER Husband and wife twinned in red-checked flannel slam through double-glass doors, aborting sodden cardboard onto ceramic floor. A wilting Cocker Spaniel makes unholy music inside. Husband nudges it toward the counter with caramel Caterpillar boots, Found it on a roadside, diesel truck pitching its body.

Somehow still breathing, gash spilling the underbelly. The salmon-faced couple folds hands in front of reception, she stroking her fat thumb back and forth. Too poor for a veterinarian, they want to surrender him, adopt when hes well, sewn flesh and mortared bone. His blood sweats through the cardboard, pools the unswept floor. We hoist and he plummets straight through. She collapses to her knees crying Dios mio, rocking the dog.

Hes bleeding out and she rocks him though shes crushing and he winces, soaks her cotton shirt. Not knowing what to do, having no release signatures, we stand and act official. Listen for cars blowing past on black highway. INSTEAD OF A SHOTGUN he is tied to our silver ten-foot gate with straw twine, neck rubbed raw trying to break loose. Unaddressed note threading the lock latch, Please find home. The dog shimmies wet chocolate coat, twists his head when I untie him. He searches the long dirt drivewayno blue pickup, rusted-out cab he can ride in.

I tug the slip knot lead, steer him to the shelter, painted iron door slams behind us. On his identity card: hold for seven days EUTHANASIA (E-ROOM) Standing in the dank laundry room, I scrape shit from cotton blankets, cram one after another into the washer. Translucent blue ribbons downspiral over pilled bedclothes. My arms crave sleep, sting and prick. As I wrap ivory sheets, clouds swell the e-room speeds to bury me, my name summoned over the PA. I reach into the marigold dryer, draw a quilt and begin folding.

The dogs rush around me, ebony nails scarring enameled floor. The shelter darkens, warhorse winter. We speak with eyes. LESSONS i In afternoon sunlight, on the Harborfront Mall roof, we got our first lesson on dying. We stood in a circle, a group of boys and girls; the axis, a broken-winged sparrow. It wobbled, keeled on its face.

After staring a while, one lanky boy argued, It cant fly again. He told us girls to turn away our pretty faces. In my peripheral, skirt hems flapped and soared, skinny wrists came down to stifle movement, and I witnessed the same boy take up the battered bird in one red, sweaty hand. The others bowed, half-panting for a glimpse of panty. This is mercy: when the boy flung the chirping clump of feathers like a baseball against a brick wallhorrific curiosity. Two smacks. The wall; hot roof we stood on.

I never imagined how it would sound out death, how the second snap a sort of echo and all the girls whirled around with skirts in tight fists, gasped ii Wanting him to take over me, speak for me, seize the old Daschund by the forearm and say, Im ready. He does. Takes patiencepulling down the plunger, measuring cobalt poison. He marks a page in the black book, falls onto his knees, onto white floor, removing the kelly green collar as if unlatching this hairy throat, tossing tags which sing like bullets against stripped metal and thread, the already heaped instruments posing on a bed of loose hair. The boy, too, holds the dog, now nameless. One arm around the red body. The other, thumb rolling back on forearm, clamps a throbbing vein.

How can I say now, It wasnt I. Not I who didnt cry out after the dogs eyes glassed over, cringe when he showed how to test for death, stabbing the poor heart. Its slurring beat bobbed the syringe. Who was I to hear over and over on the mall roof, It cant fly again, and believe it? SHELTER In the snow, I crawl out, claw charred earth like tundra but cant get at the heart before it vanishes. And the dogs too. They sniff and howl for shelter all night. SUNDAY MORNING The dogs rouse in frenzy.

Off-key choir when I come in, Black Lab on my lead. We track wet spruce paint cedar soil distant air along chain link pews. The dogs bow, bony haunches hooked to air. Worshipping. SKIPPING STONES It isnt death that brings us here. Today, its a love story in the stone euthanasia room.