Like you a fan of irreverence, I am

making this poem about my dog.

It’s true that he destroyed a fern

through avid urination, that the fern

belonged to a stranger far more virtuous

than me, the type who would not

be flattered by random comments about

beauty, would not secretly take photos

of a woman’s legs below a table,

would not take these photos

and post them to social media. What sort of

dog artist does that, “humanitarian”?

 

***

Eileen G’Sell’s poetry and cultural criticism has been featured in Boston Review, VICE, Los Angeles Review of Books, Hyperallergic, Conduit, and Salon. Her first full-length volume of poetry, Life After Rugby, was published in 2018, and in 2019 she was nominated for the national Rabkin prize in arts journalism. She teaches at Washington University and the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center. She lives in St. Louis and New York. Find her on Twitter @Reckless_Edit.