Dion O’Reilly
Dogs
Curled in hot dust, muzzles tucked under tails,
skin flicking flies, we see them lying close
at the feet of Vietnam vets who stand
on meridians with bent cardboard signs.
Scattered like fallen pigeons in the noonday heat,
streetwise pit bulls in studded collars guard
the addicted as they sleep.
The demands of the anxious, the accusations
hurled at the unblinking sky—
none of it fazes them— warm-eyed they gaze up
at the ones who keep them.
Maybe there was a time we loved like that,
before monuments and wheat, wheels, and fire,
before we wanted a separate power held
in our pink-skinned palms.
When we walked on padded paws in packs, tracking
meat to feed-on side by side, sat together
through solstice nights, howling at the bad moon.
Poems by Dion O’Reilly have appeared or will appear in New Ohio Review, Sugar House Review, Rattle, The Sun, Massachusetts Review, New Letters, Bellingham Review, Atlanta Review, Catamaran, and other journals and anthologies. O’Reilly has spent much of her life on a farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains. She has worked as a waitress, barista, baker, theater manager, graphic designer, and public school teacher.
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