The dog is full of milk and tired
Worth/self—tiny parasites
Convulse across skin
Gollop for teats
Never finding
Never latching
A child cries streets away
Unheeded, dog at your feet
Eyes pleading brown and still
The quiet of a body pain has entered
The dog’s belly echoing
The cries go nowhere
But around
Or further inside
Your word is
Commentary, not poetry
The word sorry
Repeatedly dropped from my lips
But never yours
Sharp shadows angle across
Spreads of white space
Something expected
Something ink
A word isn’t endless, it falls repeatedly
The persistence of the hungry
Those parasites punctuate but don’t stab
They plead need
Honour truth
Those old fashioned, somewhat earnest, things
A child cries nearby
You can hear her
Over the tv, dishes, argument, posturing
The child cries and
The dog at your feet is full of milk and
Waiting to be fed
Previously
Full circle ellipses
The world pictured but, in this panel
Warm, wide as awe
A window frame showing night by
Black ink, white stars
Ruffled hair on pillow
Loose Superman pyjamas twisted
Limbs flung far
Tiny big man so gentle in sleep
So sweet in my chest
Thought bubbles gently curving like clouds
Later, rising conflict
3/4 glass of vodka
Spitting through mouth
Words, going under
Blurred figures, lights haloed, hum, laughter
Do you sup the words?
Do you hope to be transformed
By an other?
Your words are 24 proof
Bold ink, underlined
The lights are too bright
And everything’s muffled
I wish I wasn’t here now
I wish I wasn’t
Round ink ellipses
Next page
Sometime later
Sound effects jagged edges, knocking
Closeup of two policemen filling the door
Heavy belts, weighed down by the job, but not this
They separate the couple
Record statements
A quick in and out
A known routine
He says he believes you
Knows he’s lying
The alcohol, the room turned over
The state of you
The wild distress
You don’t want to press charges though, do you?
Previously
The speech bubbles, extra large words
Gobbing from your wet, angry, mouth
Crawling out of their panels, filling the page
Phone in hand held away as
She’s pinned down
Dispatch angry, insisting on address
Howling too much to answer
You pressing down on her
The weight, inability to move
So familiar
The hands where they shouldn’t be
Thought bubble
But what could she press charges for?
Instead, Police Order issued
Man in singlet walking off, disappearing
Into deep shadows of street
The dog following alongside, in the gutter
Illustrations perfectly drawn
Your words make light of things
Your captions read
The blonde closes the door on harrowed room
Destroyed lamp, close up of hand holding piece of wood
Fractured from upturned chest
Paper every place, shivered glass
Sending light reflections
Far over the page
She carefully places everything back
Settles disarray
She tries, though
Angles are dramatic and
Things won’t turn the right way up again
Here, without a word
I’m tiredly shading the comic
Filling in detail
The endless mid-tones amidst
Tensions of dark and light
Ink and page
Spend hours on the fur of the dog
Draw crawling parasites everywhere
Part the fur for the teats
Never finding, never latching
Only hands, ink, you, repeatedly crawling over the page
Over her body
In the gutters
Finding traces of dog.
