The dog days start
with the end of the human ones.
Sunsets light effigies
the size of foothills. Ice
slicks roads and trickles
into rocks,
hardening
expanding
splitting
to chunks.
Pile-ups pile
up. Metal
crumples with a sound like
wailing, bones snap
in time with ice. Skyscrapers
drive down like golden spikes. Skies
char and so does skin until it
can be lifted from flesh like a
carapace. Snowflakes scratch eyeballs and
fingers clink, blue, to the ground and
the last men’s knees splinter
against the ground as they fall
at the feet of the gods,
of severed, lifted heads and
they whisper, hoarse, I’m sorry—
they are not forgiven. The last
man is torn from flesh
by teeth
and a howl
echoes.
The moon opens
her yellow sleeping eye
and blinks.
The world pants
and licks itself clean. The
dogs—
lapdogs, mastiffs,
teacups, pitbulls—
take to the forest shade
to the desert dust
to the savannah grasses.
the sounds of the
world become their barking
laughter and the
padding of paws.
Packs re-
form. Dog
did not forget
its shape.
Paws rove
the sand and moss,
the grass and snow.
The world again hums
to mangy beats.
About the Author
Claire Beeli is an emerging writer from Long Beach, California. Her work is published or is forthcoming in Block Party Lit, Polyphony Lit, and The Apprentice Writer, among others. She is her city’s 2023-2024 Youth Poet Laureate. Her writing has been recognized by the Scholastic Foundation, Columbia College Chicago, The New York Times Learning Network, and others.
