Oscar

Not the tail-wagging beagle who followed her
everywhere in the fields off Laurel Street—
spotty, floppy-eared, who later took up
sheep rustling, not the black and white pug,
round-cheeked and -bellied, smelly, mouth
dripping, rear wriggling—no, this was Oscar,
the marigold-colored mutt who, the day
she sat splay-legged by the nasturtiums
on the summer veranda, trotted up
from fields of corn and when she started up,
sprang and bit—hard—her upturned face,
spilling the blood that sent waves through her,
along the dress she wore, her sister’s dress,
the one already red, now red again
in each seam stitched by the mother’s hand.

First appeared in Monterey Poetry Review 2007