A rough bit of fun with 13 figures of fear. Girls haunted by love, parking lots haunted by girls. The air has a verve when the dead rise again, sticky and smelling of oil. Henriksen offers up the final shake of a judge’s wig, showering us with the bugs that live inside.
Black Dog
The law is a white dog and death
is a black dog. My love is a white
stone and my word is at the back
of the freezer. Dinner is at seven
but we’ll never make it. Pursued
while also in hot pursuit, I never
caught my breath again so focused
was I, unbecoming. The night
is a lost frog, the dream is a night
lawn. No god got it more wrong.
You walk in and everyone in the bar
shares a secret but you don’t know
that, my outsider riding time’s
melancholy orange peel, applauding.
When the bell rang all the birds flew
away and when it stopped they
returned. My head is a graveyard
and my home is this meadow. Below
the floorboards, teeth glistening,
patient, I know we die a little
each day, but that’s not enough,
baby, soft black dog, cold country.
I’ll see you in my dreams and
in the morning I won’t remember.
Just pour my coffee and add my
sugar, feel the cup hot in my hands.
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No More Deaths is an advocacy group based in Tucson and Phoenix, Arizona, United States, that seeks to end the series of fatalities of undocumented immigrants crossing the desert regions near the United States-Mexico border. Volunteers for the organization provide food, water, and medical aid to people crossing the US-Mexico border through the Arizona desert and offer humanitarian aid to people in Mexico who have been deported from the US.