Читать книгу Confessions of a Barefaced Woman - Allison Joseph - Страница 10

Neighbors trained their dogs mean,

fenced them and chained them,

whipped their flanks with rope

or wire, until their dogs would pounce

on any stranger happening by.

Didn’t matter whether the dog

was terrier or Pekingese, boxer

or mongrel, neighborhood dogs

could yelp themselves into such fury

that there were houses I’d hurry past

coming home from school, book bag

bouncing on my shoulder, socks

sagging around skinny ankles.

So when one sudden fist of a dog

leapt up to bite me, his teeth

piercing two red rows below the crook

of my arm, I scurried home even faster

to show my father the damage.

He went to start a shouting match

with the dog’s owner, both of them

yelling, cursing, the dog’s owner

in Spanglish, my father in threats

of wrathful retribution.

Fearing rabies, Father pulled me

by my other arm, sat me in the car,

and drove me to Jacobi Hospital,

where I waited on a hard-backed chair,

clutching my arm, peering at the punctures

that scrap of a dog had made,

while gunshot victims rolled past

on metal gurneys. When a young doctor

finally approached, he chuckled,

said I think you’ll live, then shot me

with some syringe that made my arm

ache more. He turned away, laughing,

white back soon lost as I watched him

return to the business of consoling

the mothers of the newly dead.