A Dog and a Boy

by Richard Katrovas

Joe Brickhouse saw his dog
get smashed by a garbage truck
in Elizabeth City, North Carolina.
He was twelve and smoked Luckies
and had a glass eye.
I won’t tell you about the games of marbles
or how he fucked his sister,
nor shall I discuss in the abstract
his deep-seated contempt for authority
or why he kicked my ass
just because I was his friend and he loved me.
For this is about a dog and a boy
and has virtually nothing to do with Mark Twain
and the rest of American Literature.
It’s about a garbage truck
that backed up over a beautiful Lab
and a white kid who wrapped his arms
around the dead animal and gasped for air
and his face turned red then bluish,
whose tears streamed
onto the blood-caked fur of the dog,
and who howled and screamed so loud
at gray and porch-lit 5 a.m.
windows all down Merrimac scraped open,
and T-shirts, drawers, scrungy robes
hobbled onto porches
to stare in wonder
at a human being
who had learned so young
how to talk to the dead.