Banshee
The day my mother almost died
I hid in the basement because our dog had run away and no one cared, at that moment, to go after her. It was harder than I had ever or even thought, not that I thought. I wailed like a living corpse, I wailed like a banshee down there near the washing machine and the indoor clothesline and the extra yellow refrigerator (my mother came back, the dog came back). Down there on my hands and knees near death.
Are we not right now
outside on the tundra harnessing the sled dogs, three of whom have already died?
Banshee was the dog’s name,
she was named after a plane, a plane named after a terrible Irish female fairy who forbodes by wailing a death in the family, for naming is a terrible thing such as naming one thing when you mean another.
Now Mary Lorraine they said
you are crying for your mother not for the dog can’t you see that? I could see I never really liked that dog but I never really liked my mother either.
Daddy said when he was coming in low
he could see the faces of the enemy wailing as they ran for the tram. What a good dog he was. I could see why he ran away. I wished I were an igloo. I ate a turkey leg. I lay on my waterbed and ground my teeth, counting my fingers instead of the days.
Are we not right now outside on the tundra
harnessing the sled dogs, throwing the meat of the dead to the dogs, I mean feeding the ones who are left?
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