Pound Puppies by Zack Carson
Poetry editor Nicolette Ashley Visciano on today’s poem: For those compelled to adopt this poem like a junkyard dog, carrying its words into the home of your mind as if it were a sleeping child, then you and I are alike. I carry the weight of this poem like a list of my own wants for this lifetime, the same as anyone else. Zack Carson’s words, caught between a guarded bark and a shy whimper, beg the question of how an old wound may be sutured after all is said and done. When you want to touch love but won’t let love touch you. When you keep growing up but never grow out of this feeling of want. There is magic in owning what refuses to dissipate with age. By giving voice to that space in between a bark and a whimper, Carson manages to gift the reader something that could never be taken away.
pound puppies
I want to touch love but there’s a guard dog
barking in my mind. Wouldn’t put that hand
too close to his face. Don’t gift him something
you just take away. He spent his whole life
watching the other shoe drop and still gets
surprised that he can’t access joy. Go figure.
And it still feels dumb! To whimper I want to.
Nobody should have to want at this age.
But it won’t dissipate. So here’s my list:
I wanna be baked into your birthday
cake / I wanna have two months’ rent paid /
I wanna sleep like every day is Sunday.
I’m not sure these things are meant for me.
They’re for almost no one, it would seem. But—
if you’re not found handsome, you can be handy.
Wasn’t born lucky, so I make myself
useful. Place the junkyard dog in my arms.
Strip the collar off his neck. Feed him this
whole pepperoni pizza. Crack his favorite
cold beer open. Let him pick out whatever
tape he wants to rent from the video store.
Carry him in from the backseat
like a sleeping child. Kiss his furry head.
We can run the whole thing back tomorrow.
This is how we suture the old wound.
Zack Carson is a poet and musician from Asheville NC, currently working towards an MFA at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. His work has been published in The Shore, BRUISER, Soundings East, and Ballast, among others.
