Didi Jackson
The Party is Downstairs
The rescue dog who is locked inside
a room away from the party
sits as close as he can, shimmies his rear
to the place the jam and door join,
presses his back to the needle of light
that escapes from the hallway, and there
begins his dream of muted barks
and twitches of chase. He forges
a second and third head
to protect his small threshold, sharpens
his knife-mind and drinks in the multitudes
of his enemies. Just yesterday
he chased an inkblot of light
from the opening glass kitchen door
and ran along the wall incessantly
licking at the spot into which he knew
it must have disappeared. Surly he knows
who least to worry about. They say dogs can tell
a bad person. It’s all perspective
or pheromones. To have that chickpea nose,
the terrier goatee of Trotsky,
the eyes like two black olives,
the ability to separate out in advance
those who might cause pain.
In how many lifetimes could
that skill have saved me?
My friend who when helping me
build bookshelves yelled at my dog
and then his wife, her cocoa-colored hair
covering half her face. And though this stray
weighs only as much as a jug or two of milk,
his sleep-breath is mixed with the desolation
of train windows and of abandoned homes
and the empty streets from which he was born.
Didi Jackson is the author of Moon Jar (2020) and the forthcoming collection My Infinity, both with Red Hen Press. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, the New Yorker, and elsewhere. She has had poems selected for Best American Poetry, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, and the Slow Down with Tracy K. Smith. She lives in Nashville where she teaches creative writing at Vanderbilt University.