Macho

A man in long shorts had a tiny dog

he tossed into the leaves piled at the edge

of people’s yards, the dog

the same brown as the leaves.

Too small to bark

it squeaked as it was tossed.

I was seeing someone and we passed it

on our way downtown. A street where boys

stuck dollar bills over coils of shit

then watched who came along

and picked them up. Then they jeered

from the window. They were in college

living together. Girls lived together too

and it was warm enough you could

still see them tanning on a roof

or in the kiddie pools they dragged

to strips of grass along the sidewalk.

The dog’s name was Macho.

Each time we walked, I hoped

to see it. He found my hope

annoying, then pathetic.

I think you wish you were that dog.   

No, I want it; I don’t want to be it.

I think you want to be it.

We were in love

or in some other thing love served

as cover for. It required constant testing,

trying to humiliate while seeming

innocent, uninvested. Back then

I didn’t understand that everybody

did these things, choking or pissing

on each other, having the girl

impersonate a child being molested.

You got somewhere and after

you were where you started.   

We drove across the river

to a discount grocer where the baggers

wore black aprons over buttoned shirts

and pushed your cart out

to your car for you, even if you

asked them not to, it was mandatory.

Next door, the gas station sold souvenirs

of itself: lighters and what looked like earring boxes

packed with thumb-size gummy pizzas.

Sun touched the river.

Complicated trees leaned out

at angles to the water.

On the radio, a man who made

a movie was explaining no one

got it: it isn’t funny. The frozen

chicken triggers something

for the boy, his realization.

Around us stretched the aisles of the fields

then prairie, prairie grasses

over whose incessant restlessness the roads

and towns were pieced. And far out

moving slow across the earth

black carriages of Mennonites

drawn by horses.

My job was teaching acting at a middle school.   

The skinniest of the Sams was most talented.   

Asked to play an animal, the other children

jumped or squawked, but Sam’s face hardened

to a twitching glare, his paws examining

the rug before they crossed it.   

On the porch, coffee cans

preserved summer rain, cigarette butts

gone tender, floating. You could smoke   

and look out at the uncut lawn

down to the snapped stakes of tomato plants

he’d smashed when he was angry.

It had started with us laughing

lying in the grass, him saying

let me cut off a piece of your scarf

to remember today by. No

it started from my only

feeling I was myself

when I resisted things.

I turned away. I felt

his scissors in my hair. Late fall

the town put on its festival.

Three generations wandering

in jerseys, carrying foam fingers.

He was house-sitting

and along the walls, some books I knew

wore bindings I’d never seen.

They belonged together. They were all dark red

with notches down their spines.

If you debased yourself before a man

debased you then you’d have

a little peace. It was a choice then. It was

running ahead of the others and standing

on the bank where you could see

yourself how things went—the ragged

progress of the lichen, gnats, a swimming beach,

the concrete becoming gravel.

I thought that way for years.

Margaret Ross

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