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NICK AIEZZA

Because Living Alone is Easier with a Dog
    
            
For us, a dusting of October snow
promised annihilation. A blue
glow from wood burning stove, our life
expectancy. If the flame went out
we would shiver against each other
willing body heat to finally warm us.
We were able to experience joy once
when the shade of our oak died
and sunlight slipped through limbs
before Autumn could burn leaves
from their stems. We justified our fuel
source for that winter
and lived like rich men--
I played my violin and you stomped
through snow melting under your paws
on hardwood floors like a bass drum
to keep time--
                                    How you were so sad
when I had to burn my fiddle for warmth
still makes me cringe to recall. My first mistake:
whiskey, sure, and the second was trust
in the Farmer’s Almanac for mild weather.
We were having such a ball
fiddling good jigs with strong booze
that I failed to judge October snow right.
By December we’d run out of wood.
We both got sick. I recovered easy but you
worsened as December revolved around
the North Star. Because living alone
is easier with a dog, I didn’t shoot you
at first. Selfish, yes, but you’d be the first
dog I’d shoot, and perhaps for that reason,
I felt like I had to savor that
cowlick in time. I used a .22 rifle,
over my .38, because I knew the blast
would send a bullet into your skull
to rattle through your brain
like banjo twang and mutilate life
without an exit wound and freed then,
along with a single spent shell
knocking on the floor where we'd danced,
was every loyalty in your mind.
I pulled the shutters down,
placed the casing on the frozen mantle,
filled a tea cup with water warmed
in my hands wrecked from a .22 recoil
weak in that numb afternoon. I let snow drift
outside my window and hoped it would mask
where you should have been alive
in the corner under my writing desk
dreaming up poems for me to write
while you ran through your sleep like trust. 



62   The Paris-American

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Nick Aiezza received his MA from Manhattanville College where he served as Poetry Editor of Inkwell. Currently, he lives in the Finger Lakes region of New York state.


   
   Next week's poet:

 T. Zachary Cotler
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