Ruff Times
On Bainbridge gingko fruit seeds the street
lean neighbors stray their feathered hounds
A city full of dog, a hard-breathing city,
a city that leans at its leash
And draws its corners, feeds
its animal borders, seasonally bright,
Alternately vicious and diffident,
the way a mood changes the weather
Such a city needs animals
to pave wide swaths of light
Meanwhile the nation has spoken
it wants a new system of accessory
It wants Britney to cool down, to pause,
reflect, drink a big chipped mug of compunction
The nation is angry, it has time, while
we walk ourselves by a muddied river
It's a rusty kind of feasibility, this
awful hour of owning beasts
But on to more important matters
divorce is the sign of knowledge in our time
Julia Bloch is a doctoral student in English at Penn. Her work has appeared recently in Mirage/Period(ical), How2, 26: A Journal of Poetry and Poetics, and other journals. Contact her at jb354@yahoo.com.