Musculature

by Carl Phillips

The last dog I owned, or — more humanely put, so
I’m told — that I used to live with, she’d follow me
everywhere. She died eventually. I put her down’s
more the truth. It is the truth. And now
this dog — that
I mostly call Sovereignty, both for how sovereignty,
like fascination, can be overrated, and for how long it’s
taken me, just to half-understand that. Pretty much my
whole life. Mortality seemed an ignorable wilderness
like any other; the past seemed what, occasionally, it
still does, a version of luck when luck, as if inevitably,
gets stripped away: what hope, otherwise, for suffering?
When did honesty become so hard to step into and stay
inside of, I’m not saying
forever, I could last a fair time
on a small while. Sovereignty sleeps hard beside me. I
pass my hands down the full length of him, like a loose
command through a summer garden. Let those plants
that can do so lean away on their stems, toward the sun.

Source: Poetry (June 2015)

Most Poetry will post a poem by a LGBTQ+ poet, selected by our members, each day through the month of August.

Golden Retrievals

by Mark Doty

Fetch? Balls and sticks capture my attention
seconds at a time. Catch? I don’t think so.
Bunny, tumbling leaf, a squirrel who’s—oh
joy—actually scared. Sniff the wind, then

I’m off again: muck, pond, ditch, residue
of any thrillingly dead thing. And you?
Either you’re sunk in the past, half our walk,
thinking of what you never can bring back,

or else you’re off in some fog concerning
—tomorrow, is that what you call it? My work:
to unsnare time’s warp (and woof!), retrieving,
my haze-headed friend, you. This shining bark,

a Zen master’s bronzy gong, calls you here,
entirely, now: bow-wow, bow-wow, bow-wow.

from Sweet Machine: Poems. Copyright © 1998 by Mark Doty.

Most Poetry will post a poem by a LGBTQ+ poet, selected by our members, each day through the month of August.