Of Dogs and Ghosts 

Here we have a dog who barks at ghosts, alive and otherwise. The ghosts come in droves or lurk in corners. We beat him for barking at what no one else can see, and he runs, whimpering, to the door.

Men come here to sleep, to recline in the day while the rest of us scrub toilet bowls or crawl on our knees, picking up the mangled garbage that the dog, in his restlessness, has strewn across the floor.

We scratch our fingers through their hair, dragging their dreams into weightlessness, restlessness. Eyes drugged, they wake and stumble towards the door, having never spoken a word.

Every night, we crowd into different rooms, sitting on floors and pillows and beds and staring out the windows at men who walk by with their hands clenched around something we take to be ourselves. The only evidence we see of our dreams is the bottles strewn across the yard.

The boxes rest in piles that reach the ceiling. They speak to no one except the dog, who stations himself in wait for one who will never come to take them away.

Sometimes we hear the door, banging with slow insistence. We fly in confused circles until we see it is only the dog, who in his sleep, is being led away.

We take pictures of ourselves, costumed in remnants of what others have left behind, sending them out through cracks in the door. “See, see?” we say, “This is what we have sent you.” “It never reached us,” they say. “We have never seen this before.”

(Note: I wrote this poem a long time ago.)