Butch

We stood far enough away
so that all I could see
in the corrugated aluminum doghouse
was the reflection of the sunlit yard
on his eyes.

“He won’t bite,” she was saying,
“He’s a good dog!”

A Shepherd-Doberman mix,
lean and black,
usually barking
at the end of his chain,
near a red sign with white letters:
Beware of Dog
but today he was quiet.

“Just don’t be afraid,
and he’ll like you”

I decided to try,
and as I went closer
the eyes didn’t move,
I could just hear his breath
over the cut grass breeze.

A low growl began,
and slowly increased in size,
like shifting gears,
with quick intakes of air between,
until he jumped,

and I jumped and turned,
(so fast it hurt my knee.)
He caught me for a second,
but I broke away,
and I ran and I cried.
She followed me around,
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!
You alright? I’m so sorry!”
Her parents ran out,
and I gripped my pants,
cause it hurt so bad,
and they asked me to go inside,
so I did,
and they said they wanted to see my behind,
where I got bit,
and I said no,
but they insisted,
they needed to know,
and I said I’d be okay,

but they grabbed me,
and pulled down my pants,
and pulled down my shorts,
and I put my hands over my face,
and they said I was okay.

But I wasn’t okay.

– John LeMasney

 

Venison

I was staying at
a cabin in the mountains,
amongst a thousand trees,
with a girl who came
from a family of hunters,
all of us there
for just a few days.

It was a meat trip,
to stock up on venison in their
six foot wide freezer.

They left the cabin at 6 am,
gone four hours,
during which we heard
eight or nine echoing booms,
like a low-budget fireworks show
in the next town over,
spread out over the time.

They came back
and strung him up,
to help him drain,
they carefully
removed his crowned head with
a few well-placed machete slices, efficiently,
over a few five gallon buckets.

They placed his head on the stained, cracked linoleum,
just out of the way of the downward stream.
I looked at him for at least
ten minutes,
from a distance.

I waited for them
to go back out,
and I got closer.

He looked like a fighter,
swaying, muscular, fit,
but fur wet with blood,
near the tiny hole,
where it stuck out in slick points,
like thorns,
like a cat just out of the rain.

He was hanging, dripping, steaming.
The flow was steady and sparkling, then trickling, then
three seconds between the black drops
falling into the buckets.

He smelled like wet wool sweaters
left too long in a washer.

He couldn’t stop staring
with his flat black eyes,
and we gazed at each other,
wondering the few differences
between us.

– John LeMasney

John LeMasney reading Venison.

Lights in the Snow

Snow brings a hush
that quiets the horn,
yet windows nearby
start to light.
A car lay on the roadside,
a two ton turtle
on its shell.

Sirens sound miles away while
open jowls gather.
Flashlights shine on
the snowy tracks that go
onto the curb and into the lightpole.

A little girl watches
the white turn transparent,
when the flakes, with a hiss,
lick the muffler.

He hangs in his seatbelt,
his hands sweep the roof,
while the people
stand and stare.

– John LeMasney

Shorehouse Skylight

In a house in the woods
we’ve had 50 years in our family,
a soft edged
rectangle of light
moves a few feet per hour.
Across the rug
across the tile
towards the wall
sometimes brighter,
sometimes flickering,
other times darker.

The room has
a breeze from the fans,
which rock and knock the pull chains
into the glass globe bulb cover
over and over and over,
but besides that, it’s silent and still.

But when your arm or leg passes
through the shaft of light,
you can remember

the hot, bright sun,
the burning sand on your feet,
the salt in your nose,
the roar and squeak in your ears
of crashing waves and scavenging birds,
just a few miles from the house.

– John LeMasney