SAMPLE POEM
The Dog from Pompei
sculptural installation by Allan McCollum, 1991
Fate replicates. The chained dog of ancient Pompeii, caught
on his back, writhing in his collar against the tile floor
swept with ash, is now many dogs, all their fours in the air.
It's as if the one dog, the main attraction, turns in the dessert case
of meringue pie, rotates his hindquarters, his open mouth,
spinning all sides of himself past that August afternoon. He is back
in motion, freeze-framed on long tables, back to the contortionist
he became when the volcano blew, when the people
of his house ran past him into the street, holding hands. He hated that
collar, its thick leather rib such a nuisance when the need to run
reawakens. Now body after body drains of color, ghost-meats
that ask you what to do about such a thing as thisŸthe domestic cast
as the heavy, the sort of weight you might carry around in a bad year,
like footed moons. When ash smothered the body / bodies,
legs twisted upright in nursery beds, row after row of double helix.
© 2009 by Linda Dove, In Defense of Objects
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