Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 2:2, Part 1 by Synesthesia Literary Journal

Synesthesia Literary Journal 2:2 ÂŠ Christopher H. Gorrie and Seretta Martin 2014 Printed in the United States of America All rights reserved. Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. PatentParadigm Publications All inquiries or other correspondences should be directed to: patentparadigmpublications@gmail.com All visual art within this volume is by Melonie Weismann. Front and back cover art by Shane Castaneda.

Table of Contents Copyright

Tomato

Persephone for Example

The Oil Painting of Heaven on 4x8 Plywood Board

The Slayer of Pain

Neophobia

The Part Where I Fall Asleep

Is There Something Ghotiy in this Class?

Butterflies for Christopher

Painting with Turpentine

Slipping on Wet Paint

The First Canine Uprising

Armor

Applications

Sleeper Agent Love Letter

Spoon Is Me

Grace Notes

And the Sofas Are Kicking Back

Without a Heart

Singing the Song of Angels: A Response

My brother left

Contributor Biographies

68 3

Tomato by John McKernan On this white plate you are redder than Blood I remember when I Planted you Rain fell in buckets The shovels of sheep shit did not have a voice to say the word Barn or Shovel I don't think this music will hurt you at all Roy Orbison & in a few moments Emmy Lou Harris It does something to my heart Somehow it can coax memories to rise that lie buried like fine white roots in clay searching for water Anywhere Somehow Still connected to the sunlight Even the moon has tentacles Silent mirror in the sky's black ink I bought this knife at a flea market close to Milton West Virginia Breece Pancake's home town I wonder if it ever killed any one? Ever did any good damage in a bright alley to some thug who whistled at your sister wrong or spat on the wrong side of the church parking lot When you cut a good ripe tomato the skin begins to unzip & a small wash of fluid begins to drain towards the plate Red The nurse who writes poems told me that amniotic fluid is mostly urine & sometimes has a faint pink tint like the womb

This tomato tastes great I'm glad my mother didn't kill me Sometimes she probably wanted to Like the time Judy Martin talked to her Those two hours one Saturday afternoon about all the blood on all her laundry My mother's silence was deep I think that one lasted at least three months This tomato was delicious The few seeds & the faint threads of red flesh & clear juice make me think of my old brain Gone through a blender That's what some ideas are like None of them ever tasted as good or as sweet as this vanished tomato

Persephone for Example by John McKernan With her recipe For corn pone with maple syrup Papa Zeus Tuning his bong Laced with poppy powder Demeter In new goatskin sandals A torch in one hand Lantern in the other Racing a sundial to Lethe The Greeks had their comic books too Carrying centuries of silence Petrified by birth & death Always searching for new ways to lie about sex With last year's wine & flowers

The Oil Painting of Heaven on 4x8 Plywood Board By John McKernan Has Mile-high Lego neon green skyscrapers And Amazonic rivers Swarming With ugly bikini female angels And clouds of Hideous Male angels With long gray biker beards How do I know it's Chicago? Easy Fifty foot icicles And an army of frozen dentures Marching in style to the football stadium

<fireflies> by Dylan Flint The wind is blowing hard in Farmington. As a matter of fact, the wind has been blowing the entire time I’ve been in Maine. Sometimes I wonder what it is the wind is trying to tell me. Last night my mom and I had a lobster dinner with one of my aunts and uncles at Shaw’s in Pemaquid on the Maine coast. The restaurant, or “lobstah’ shack,” sat above a small harbor that looked over the Atlantic Ocean. On any given day you can see lobster boats bringing their fresh catch into the harbor, mooring, and unloading the lobster right there at Shaw’s. I proudly proclaimed that this had to be the freshest way to eat a Maine lobster. My aunt politely corrected me, “Well actually if you know a lobstermen you could go out on his boat, catch a lobster, and then head to one of the islands out there, and boil him over a fire. I think that would actually be the freshest way.” I asked her if this was a long lost dream of hers. You know, with the whole burly lobsterman snatching a crustacean out of the murky depths of the forbidding Atlantic, and just the two of them, sitting there on an island around a manmade fire where they would wait in each other’s arms for their booty to boil, before tearing apart its body and devouring its sweet meat. Without hesitation my aunt nonchalantly replied, “Oh no, I got to do that on one of your cousin’s boats onetime. Your cousins a lobster fishermen you know?” I laughed to myself and looked out over the sea. The sun had already set by that time and I took notice of pink clouds growing ever darker as the sun drowned deeper into the water. My aunt, noticing the look in my eye, told me that I was getting in touch with my heritage by being out there. I felt peaceful knowing this is where I had come from. When we got back to my aunt’s cottage, later that night, my mom noticed fireflies dancing behind the house. We walked around the yard to get a closer look, where I lightheartedly said, “I thought fireflies only existed in fairy tales.” With his wrist bent, and a smile on his face, my uncle did his best fairy impression while saying, “Oh Dilly, how do you know you’re not in one right now?” This made me giggle. After everyone else went inside, I leaned up against the railing of my aunt’s porch to have my bedtime cigarette. I stood there blowing smoke at mosquitos while the fireflies had me stuck in awe. I wondered to myself if the flashes were a way for the fireflies to communicate with each other, like some sort of Morse code or something. The next morning on the way back to Farmington I asked my mom how the hell it is that 9

fireflies are able to light up like they do. My mom pulled out her iPhone to ask Siri. Apparently fireflies have a special chemical in their abdomen called luciferase, and when they light up, they are trying to attract a mate. A few days ago another one of my aunts wanted to show me something that my cousin had given her as a present. I completely ignored her because all I could focus on was the Abercrombie and Fitch bag that contained the items. The guy on the bag had an unreasonable six pack and his sex-lines begged you to keep looking lower. His pants were unzipped and I found myself desperately wanting to see what was hiding beneath the rest of his jeans. “Fuuuck. This guy is hot,” I sighed to myself. My trance-like-daydream vanished just as my aunt remembered something peculiar. “You like that sort of thing huh, Dilly?” She begged. I cleared my throat. “Yes, Yes I do.” I proudly replied. In a back-woods-of-Maine-loving-auntie sort of way she curiously asked, “So you go both ways then. I see. Well, what about a family? Wouldn’t you like that?” The other day I got upset with a different aunt for treating me like a child. I think she bought me some new shorts as an apology. They were pink, kind-of-short-shorts from the Ralph Lauren outlet store in Freeport. I call them my sexy pants. I love them. I wore them to an AA meeting in Farmington. You could safely say I definitely stood out from the crowd. An “old timer” noticed me and told me to get up to the podium and start the meeting for them. I reluctantly obeyed and told a room full of strangers my story. They really enjoyed what I said. I really hate it when my mom cries. When I was a kid I would sit next to her in her bed and would not leave her side until I could get her to laugh, but these days I find myself having no clue what to say. My mom’s brother is dying from cancer and I asked him, my dying uncle, if I’d see him again. He smiled and said, “Yes.” I must have looked surprised at his assuredness because he quickly lowered his eyes, grinned from ear to ear, and told me that no one knows what happens next. The last thing he said to me before we parted ways for the last and final time was, “You know? You shouldn’t take life too seriously I think.” This morning I woke up at 4:45 and went to the point to watch the sunrise. I hadn’t had any coffee yet, or even a cigarette, and it felt like I was still dreaming. At 5:01 the blood red sky burst into celestial beams of light as the sun breached the ocean’s surface. It was amazing… Life is amazing. 10

The Slayer of Pain by R. W. Haynes A few days ago, we went to war, And now the flying beagle of peace extends His colored ears over the blessed earth, Giving thanks for the blessed bones of peace. And bless you, too, Great Hush Puppy, Anaesthetic flying object full of bones, Peacemaker, inspiration, damn good dog, Whose eyes defeat all malice everywhere. And now the war is gone, and we review The smoking ruins of history, yes, mm-hmm, Breakfast in bed, green jays outside yodeling Like rednecks, love everywhere, music etc. Until the clouds of truth roll in again And we need you, super hero, Flying above, ears trailing fire, Nose atwitch for trouble below.

Neophobia by Roxy Brown Adam and Eve: a myth. Imagine it: two orphans isolate, inoculate. Excess of Godâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;his monogamy mind, shedding hidden realms below the belly buttons exile like taboo insight. Two years ago the garden of Eden, apart from its virginity, was something. Transgress is defined as breaking, yet or and may connote: to go beyond. Suspended above the symmetry of this overgrowth bidding we parse. The vehicle is simple: to leave Adam and Eve will have to fit better than all this skin. However, hijacked holiness is an incompetent host. No way to keep you: masochism or compassion, indulgence or indigenous. Exemptionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;You leave no undoing.

The Part Where I Fall Asleep by Reece A. J. Chambers I like when it begins the white icing of a dream and the ones I only know with my eyes closed glow like rubies brighter than raspberries in July. I like when it unravels as a scarf the people clearer than cellophane the speech fresh as juice here it pours into each eye I like to swallow each second. I like to wallow in the shadows of strangers until light slinks under the door come morning and I like the very spangled thought of you too close not close enough to my arms. I like the buzz of my blood flowing quicker when you talk knowing your bones disorderly network of navy veins I like to feel the static crackle and fizz between us. I like the bench in your back garden and us on it I like the heady loveliness of it all inhale the flavours brush your cheek cling to the seconds â&#x20AC;&#x2122;til I wake and you go.

Is There Something Ghotiy in this Class? by R. S. Gwynn On entering my classroom early one day, before any of the students had arrived, I noticed a curious statement, if indeed it was a statement, left on the blackboard by what I must assume was one of my junior colleagues. It read, in all capitals “READ KENNEDY SWANS IN ICE.” In keeping with the title of the course, “The Semiosis of Semiotics” (which, unfortunately, had appeared in the university course catalogue as “The Semiotics of Semiosis,”a totally different course I had taught the previous semester) I decided to leave the text on the board for my students, all advanced English majors at the prestigious university at which I happened to be teaching, to explicate. Soon, my students began to enter, singly or in pairs, taking their seats at the tables and regarding me with faces full of the eager anticipation I had learned to expect from these bright, upper-middle-class human beings who daily seemed to hang on my every word as sharks are said to hang onto the unlucky appendages of Australian swimmers. “Let us begin with the text on the board, a poem if you will, and proceed to analyze its possibilities of meaning, its manifold ambiguities, and its ultimate dissipation into the realm of uncertainty.” At this point, a late-entering student whom I shall refer to only as Mr. D- (a token of the grade I ultimately awarded him) said, “Well, it just looks to me like somebody’s assignment.” This student, whom I assume was there only because of some kind of athletic scholarship or worse, was immediately hooted down by the rest of the class and settled into his chair with the surly look of the lower orders whose brawns exceed their brains. I should add that Mr. D- was habitually dressed in tweeds, a dress shirt with rep tie. He wore a “Paul for President” button on his lapel. I disliked him at first sight. I shall refer to the other students by the grades they received. “Shouldn’t we look at it in order?” asked an attractive young woman (Ms. B) in the front row who usually wore a good deal of makeup but, curiously, on only one side of her face. “I mean, if we’re supposed to, like, ‘read’ the poem we should start with the first word, which is ‘READ.’” “Ignoring the fact that we have been reading poems both spatially and linearly,” I said, “you have a point. What do you make of that first word?” “To me,” she replied, “it means, like, opening a book and looking at the words and trying to make some sense of them, the way they connect into sentences and things. I learned this last semester in my seminar, ‘Against Linearity: Reading Jane Austen Backwards.’ I didn’t really understand much about the course until my mom gave me a book she had studied in college called Love Story, and I read it all the way through. And then I read it backwards. It was sad the first time but happier the second, even though it still ended with the information that the girl died. But it was great both ways. It’s what made me become an English major!” Mr. D-, seemingly unperturbed by the earlier response to his comment, asked, “Well, couldn’t it be ‘read’ as in the past tense of ‘read’ that is spelled the same way but 16

sounds different? I learned that in 7th grade. I also learned that ‘read’ spelled backwards is ‘dear.’” He drummed his fingers on the tabletop in the ensuing silence. “Wait!” said another student (Mr. B+), a young male with cardinal dreadlocks, dental braces, and a pierced uvula, which he would display upon request. “‘Read’ could be a pun for ‘red’; put that together with ‘Kennedy’ and you’ve got something. My grandfather who fought against France in one of those world wars always said that Kennedy, who was president back in the forties, was a ‘red.” He meant a commie. I’ve been taking an elective called ‘The Red Scare Deconstructed : A Kinder, Gentler Stalin.’We call him Papa Joe in our class.” “Did you know that ‘Stalin’ means‘man of steel’?” asked Mr. D-. “Wow, no way!. Cool!” replied Mr. B+, an apt student. “Even better than Iron Man! I could write my thesis on that. Thanks!” “No problem, dude,” responded Mr. D-. Another student, Mr. C+,who always wore two stocking caps and a muffler even though it was August, said, “Yeah. In my ‘Steps to War in Concrete: International Relations in Hollywood’ class we watched this old movie called Ice Station Zebra. It was about how Kennedy built these nuclear submarines during World War II that could go to the South Pole and bust right through the ice. It was cool. It had Rock Hudson in it and Ernest Boeuf Bourginon and there was this other creepy guy who sounded, you know, like Hannibal Lecter. He turned out to be the villain. “So what’s that got to do with fucking swans?” asked Mr. D-, rolling his eyes. “Um,” replied Mr. C+, “swans have these long necks and they dive under the water to eat and all. So they’re like submarines. When submarines come up from under the ice their things, or whatever you call them, come up first with all those antennae and stuff. So they’re like necks. Like I said, it was at the Sorth Pole, and that’s why they called it the Cold War.” “D’accord,” said Mr D-, looking more surly than ever. Another student (Ms.B-), svelte, wearing all black with numerous tattoos and an unexpected absence of Coptic jewelry, interjected that, in her other class, “The Phallocentricicallacity of Everything, Except You,” she had learned that soft, downy creatures like swans were essentially Yonic in nature. “Like rabbits,” she said, “who have soft feathers and are symbols of feminine fertility.” “Rabbits don’t have feathers, you dope! They have fur,” exclaimed Mr. D-, who I suspected was beginning to lose it. “They’re mammals!” “Well, be that as may,” she continued, “the swan is a well-known fertility symbol who is said to deliver babies to mothers by depositing them down their smokestacks.” She added, “Only in Europe, where these kinds of things happen without the intervention of Male Phallocentricallicity, does this occur. It doesn’t happen here in America, where we’re too indoctrinated to understand it and don’t have as many chimbleys..” 17

Mr. D-, who seemed to be chewing his fingernails unmercifully, asked, “Aren’t those storks actually?” He was, as usual, hooted down. He shot what I think is commonly called “the bird” at Ms. B-. “But,” I said at this point, as the class was getting unruly and drawing bloody looks from various members, “what does this leave us with considering the whole poem: READ KENNEDY SWANS IN ICE?” Well, said Mr. B++, who never seemed to raise his head (his neck being overburdened with many chains and tattoos of chains). “I’m taking a class called ‘A Little Jameson in Your Coffee: A Post-Capitalist approach to Starbucks.’ We learned in there that Starbucks uses enough water every single day to irrigate all the corn grown in Nevada and parts of Utah for a whole year!” “You’re going to irrigate corn with boiling water?” asked Mr. D-, who had lit a cigarette in clear violation of university policy. “Water is a PRECIOUS RESOURCE!” exclaimed Mr. B++. “Why else do you think a Starbucks super-grande cookie crumble latte frappuccino de-caf costs $12! Listen to this: ‘This overconsumption of coffee–antimodern, propostmodern–then finds its opposite number and structural inversion in a group of counterstatements whose aid is to discredit the shoddiness and irresponsiblity of the postmodern in general by way of a reaffirmation of the authentic impulse of a high-modernist tradition still considered to be alive and vital as a good cup of tea.’” “Uh,” said Mr. D-, what has that got to do with the price of coffee?” “What do you want me to do, man?” replied Mr. B++. “Like, get my coffee at a McDonald’s drive-thru?” Ms. B, who had been moved to tears at this exchange so that streams of mascara ran down half her face, said, “Look, I was at this wedding recently, and there was this guy–I don’t think he was a chef but he had on one of those chef’s hats–he had a block of ice and this little tiny chain-saw and he carved this perfect swan out the ice and plopped it down in the middle of a large bowl of some really good punch.” “Haut-bourgious culture at its finest,” said Mr. D-, blowing smoke rings at the ceiling. “Yeah,” replied Ms. B, “but it was really sad to think of all that waste of water. I mean, the swan was pretty neat and all, but after a while global warming caused its neck to get, like, really skinny and the head fell off into the punchbowl. It kind of affected the taste of the punch, you know, but maybe I’d already had too much. I can’t remember anything after that, but it was sad.” It was then that my most brilliant student responded, whom I shall refer here only as Mr. A+, who had recently completed a class titled “The Fruits of Bloom: Why You Have Too Much Anxiety.” I must add that he was a clear-headed young man who later distinguished himself on Wall Street and was portrayed in a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, an actor that I remain ignorant yet respectful of. He said (and I repeat his remarks here in full): 18

It is here, to me, a directive to read a poem called “Swans in Ice.” I am a student, though somewhat reluctant, in the previous class in this room, titled “The Plain and Simple Sense of Poetry Without All the Crap,” and I have found, via the Internet, and read this poem by one X. J. Kennedy, whose initials mean nothing. It seems to me yet another case of the belated ephebe prostrating himself at the feet of the elder poet, le Mâitre. In this case, however, it is clear enough that Mallarmé, an ephebe himself, is being prostrated here (for his poem, titled “Le cygne,” which means “The Swan” in English). As Mallarmé himself became prostrated at the strong feet (size 12eee) of Victor Hugo, who had a strong prostate and was, in his own and in other’s description, God, so the ephebe drifts onward, pursued by anxiety by those whom he cannot excel, unless he figures out some way to murder those who have been dead a long time.. Thus, we evolve onward, attempting to evaluate the belated Kennedy’s attempt to present a clinamen as regards the later poem of his constipation, or praxis, as it is usually called. Frankly, I don’t think he had a climamen’s chance of succeeding. Thus, this poem (though I hesitate it to call it a “poem”) remains a misprision of the Strong Poem, which means that it should be read only in terms of the whole Anglo-French canon that precedes, and is diminished by, it. Mr. D-, as expected, had a comment: “So, you mean we gotta read, like, 1200 years of poetry, most of which is in languages we can’t understand, to get what he’s getting at?” He seemed to be getting angry. I had called security at this point and, shortly after this time, Mr. D-, who had been tazered by our campus police, was lying on the floor, drooling on his fraternity pin. So, I asked at the end of the session, “Are there any questions?” Mr. D-, lifting himself up unsteadily, as he was being dragged out of the classroom, asked, “Is there like a test in this class?” “Yes,” I responded. “Tomorrow.”

Butterflies for Christopher by Hope Ann Valentine i. "People put up walls that protect nothing." Ignoring this assessment, I proceed: “How are you?” And just like that, the conversation changes—deterred from Mr. Pseudo Freud's psychoanalysis, to the territory of topical banter. Don't psychologically probe me uninvited. The landscape of me is reserved for those who see with their soul; not scientific observers anthologizing with ravenous eyes. ii. Walls can exist without purpose, but usually aim to serve reason—a cage’s walls keep birds inside. My dead grandmother's canary pecked my fingers when I’d slip them through those thin bars. The idiom of chirps once spurred me to release the lock. Imagine my surprise when it didn't fly away. iii. Maybe the canary loved my grandmother. Maybe it respected how she’d situated its existence: "I don’t understand this, but this is how I ought to be, this is how I was placed." And that’s why it never escaped. Well-intentioned collectors love their game, and sometimes, their game reciprocates. iv. Butterfly collections: Reoccurring phenomena inside the homes of wealthier people I've known. I first noticed when I was eight. Horror presages each encounter. At ten, I stopped crying at the sight—I’d caught onto socially unacceptable and offensive. Their glass, scapegoat mausoleums: Revulsion. You can’t be an expert on butterflies without understanding what it is to be pinned.

Painting with Turpentine and a Rag by Stephen Linsteadt That first brush stroke on a blank canvas, that great hesitation, where reason is abandoned long enough to allow reflexes to have their way and the brush to choose its own palette. The fear lies in subsequent interpretations, the lingering sense of judgment. Brush strokes are vulnerable when left alone. The temptation is to mould drops and splashes into houses or trees, something conforming, recognizable by an imaginary audience. The art critics will want to write an article causing me to regret I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think of sheep in tanks of formaldehyde or giant purple poodles. So I scrape out the childish scene of trees with turpentine and a rag and start over. The blank canvas stretched over my ego is stained by all my false starts. It sits like a neon sign for the world to know I was born without an original thought. When I close my eyes and paint in the dark the canvas fills with possibilities Brush strokes sing in fluid vermilion and crimson, the stops and starts. The delicate strokes and the heavy ones keep time to the harmony of that moment, and only that moment. An unearthly chant rises from the surface like jewels from a flood, receding imperceptively, remaining only in my mind. Another blank canvas is waiting. 22

Slipping on Wet Paint by Stephen Linsteadt Existentialists make lousy painters Wet paint oozes between psychology Why Turner never grasped his own atmosphere and Rothko abandoned himself in one way fields of colour Perhaps they had a secret behind their painting a cigarette before they started a glass of wine a monk on a CD I only have sandstorms outside and the hours I sit and look at empty canvases Wrestling for meaning a match Warhol forfeited one Duchamp mocked with androgyny Admittedly Van Gogh never captured light moving through cypress But I can always count on the wind to blow

The First Canine Uprising by Sharif Shakhshir Congregation Once there was a boy who liked cats. This is the story about his dog. On the top of the hills behind Azusa, more than 200 canines are gathered to see this dog named “Roxie.” She is a mutt, white and mid-tone with black spots on her face, muzzle, and paws as if she had lost a fight with a fountain pen. Like many military leaders speaking to their troops before they die, she barks about freedom and tomorrows. The dogs are volunteer soldiers for her insurgency against human supremacy. Spit falls to the soil at Roxie’s paws during the climax of her speech. She howls to the blackness of a new moon.1 Her congregation howls along under a giant white cross, their chorus echoing over a cliff down to the city lights below. They howl on the park benches tattooed with bad graffiti. They howl from the bushes littered with spent lighters and cigarette butts. They howl from the bottom of the westward sloping hill which makes a natural stage for the canine insurgents to see their leader. Roxie was once a good girl2 who did tricks on command. She once depended on human love and wore a collar around her neck that told the world whom she belonged to and who was supposed to love her. Now her fur is smooth where her collar used to be, and she barks about military tactics to promote efficient, systematic murder. As the canines wag their tails to her every bloody word, she wonders whether revolutions are sparked by oppression, or a lack of love from those in power; she wonders if there is a difference somewhere. Feeling the energy of her troops, her tail wags. As a destined revolutionary she belongs with these creatures who don’t belong anywhere else in the world. But one of the strays departs from the pack camaraderie to heckle, “Why are we listening to a bitch?”

The translator urges the human reader to remember that this story is translated from the original Dog. While the translator will venture to culturally translate the canine experience to something humans can understand, certain things such as color, smell, and light cannot be translated perfectly from the canine experience. Understand that dogs can see in the dark where other creatures cannot. So to dogs darkness has an element of safety and purity, while light has an element of danger and corruption. This philosophy is best expressed through the opining of a 23rd century Irish Setter poet, “The universe is darkness only temporarily perverted by the presence of stars going dim.” This outlook is completely counter-intuitive to the human mindset. Please practice cultural relativism and limit one’s ethnocentric human gaze. 2 Original: “good female” The dog language does not have multiple terms for differentiating male and female. Though some may argue the use of the word commonly translated to “bitch” would apply, but this is more commonly an expression of power over the listener, similar to how the proper verb for “to give” in human Japanese may change to reflect status of giver and receiver. Canine speech and culture will be creatively translated in efforts to sound more conversational and make more sense to the English speaking human audience. 1

The coyotes smirk. The ferals begin to discuss the point. The pets, whose collars have been taken off, whimper anxiously. “Come here and let me show you where your tail is,”3 Roxie says. A large white and mid-toned mutt approaches the giant cross, under which Roxie waits smelling of blue,4 a scent of non-threatened calm. The dissenter presents his chest and flattens his ears. Roxie shows no aggression, keeping her ears up and tail wagging. The tips of her pointed ears come up to the tip of his nose. She says, “You’re in my territory; why do you assume I’m still beneath you?” “You speak in the dialect of pets,” the dissenter growls. “And all pets are members of the bitch class,” Roxie says. “We’ve all heard it before: ‘Those bitches choose food over happiness;’ ‘Those bitches jingle with the collars of slavery;’ ‘Those bitches do not speak properly, using adjectival noun phrases, and they mark genitive case wrong, and God forbid they use lax vowels instead of tense ones.’” Roxie laughs, “Pets! They’re animals!” The coyotes laugh as well. The pets and ferals lean inward with their ears facing forward. “Everyone knows that pets are of a bitch class—” In her best, but still very poor imitation of the feral dialect, Roxie says, “What did you eat for lunch today, oh, dog of the wilds of the San Gabriel Valley? Trash from the McDonalds or the KFC?” All the canines laugh at the uncomfortable truth. She turns her back to him and addresses the crowd, “We oppress each other, calling each other bitches. It’s an illusion. We’re all in the bitch class. I’m a bitch. The pets are bitches. The ferals are bitches. Even the coyotes are bitches. If you have four legs, you’re a bitch. Because every creature that is not human, is sub-human, and that’s the truth.” There is a moment of silence. “At least, that’s the truth for now,” the female under the cross added, “The revolution’s dialect is Pet. You’re free to speak how you like, but I will speak Pet as I lead you to freedom.” Roxie turns back to the dissenting mutt, “Either let go of your pride and be free, or be a proud bitch forever. You have until morning to decide.”

This is a feral cliché for “I’m going to kick your ass.” Critics debate about whether Roxie understands this. 4 To attempt to translate most smells from canine would be like trying to explain the color blue to a person who was born blind. In Dog each kind of smell has a name to it the way human languages name segments of light EG. red, orange, yellow, etc. Many translators try to use simple analogy (eg. smells like fish mixed with feces) but unfortunately, as in the example, the smells that repulse humans might be quite favorable to dogs. Since smells have an abstract emotional association with them similar to the human response to color, the most efficient translation happens through a form a synesthesia. 3

Adjustments Seven years ago, Roxie was born from a pure-bred chocolate Lab. This is where her black spots came from. Her mother never won any ribbons, but her sex organs could still be profitable to her owners, at least before she fell in love with a stray who could hop over short chain link fences. Roxie and her siblings were given away for free to people who examined their genitals, picked the sex they wanted, and took them away in boxes. The mother told her litter that humans are simple creatures of routine who like to put things in boxes. “They will take you for walks down the same streets, want you to poop in the same places, and sleep with the same breed. When they fail to make you conform, they will say that you are bad, that you are broken, and that you are ruined. Humans hate chaos and want to plan out every little thing. They want to know how big you’ll grow and how you’ll suffer before you die. They’re giving you away for free because you’re unpredictable.” One evening, a human man with a split lip and woman with light hair came to put her in a box, name her, and drive her to their house.5 The box the puppy Roxie was put into was lowered before a child, like he was a whining, leaking god. “I don’t want a dog!” the boy sobbed. He hugged a plush toy cat close to his body and an electronic purring noise came from it. The puppy barked a sharp protest. The whole family, even the offended boy, laughed at the cuteness of Roxie’s indignation. In her box she looked at the uneven markings on her paws. She was told that humans saw mutts as unwanted gifts. It’s because she was a mutt, she thought. She wasn’t born to be special. She was born to wonder what it would be like to be luckier. “I told you he wanted a cat,” the mother said. “Well, Gwen, we didn’t buy the dog for him. We got it to keep the house safe,” the man with the split lip said. Roxie was let out of her box to explore the human dwelling box.6 The kitchen smelled like food, too many foods. The sounds of her foot pads against the tile floor announced her movements until she reached the carpeted living room. This room was colder. There was a weaving of packaging tape over the hole of a broken window. The room had a white leather couch which faced an empty spot. In her last home the couch faced a television.7 Here it faced a wooden box with nothing on it. The room smelled like primate adrenaline, about a day old, the smell of yellow, the smell of a flight response. There was blood. How could they bring her here? Roxie howled. Original: “dwelling box” All structures used for creatures to live inside of are called a “dwelling box,” including bird’s nests and circular dog houses like Dogloos. 7 Original: “fantasy box” 5

The mother picked Roxie up and put her back into the cardboard box, which now had blankets. As Roxie kept howling the woman brought an old alarm clock to keep Roxie company. “This will remind you of your mother’s heartbeat,” the human mother said. It was a curiously hypnotic thing, rhythmic and untiring, but it wasn’t her mother. It wasn’t safety. Roxie wasn’t satisfied with this clockwork heart. She howled until the boy came, picked her up, and took her to sleep in his bed. She slept at the center of his existence and his existence surrounded her. He was consoling her, but she knew she was his consolation prize. Roxie modified a growl to sound like the electronic cat’s purring. At first the boy was cautious, but when he understood, he pulled her closer. Roxie learned that things would be fine if she could only be something other than what she was.8

At the time this was a common theme among canine authors. Despite this being historical fiction of the proto-revolutionary period, this echoes defiantly against the line from post-revolutionary author Harris Chandler whose novel The Cabin in the Meadow romanticized the bygone era of dogs being happier under the servitude of man: “Rover understood that things would be fine if he could only be what he always was.” 8

Failed by Mythos As Roxie grew bigger she became familiar with the word “no.” Her mother told the litter that humans hated chaos. So she barked at the unnatural, oscillating fan. She threatened the demonic, shrieking banshee device.9 She made strangers know that this house had a dog and to not dare upset the status quo. Roxie wanted to hate what the humans hated. But their response was usually, “No!” The white leather couch was instantly a “No!” If she looked at it wrong she got a “No!” Even though everyone else sat on it, she got a “No!” Even if she didn’t touch the couch but jumped onto the people who were on the couch it was time for a “No!” She called it the “No Couch” in her mind. It didn’t make sense, but she conformed for the most part. The family seemed most content looking at the fantasy box.10 They watched tiny humans walk around, talking, and making jokes. Depending on the time of day the tiny humans would talk about different things. The early morning had death, weather, and tiny humans from other shows talking about being on the other shows. Afterwards humans would talk about how needlessly complicated their outlook on reproduction makes their lives as well as explore the fragilities of human life and human memory. Then more death, weather, and tiny humans talking about tiny human shows. Then tiny humans talking about what food to eat in order to live forever. In the afternoon, things would become surreal and look like her and think like her, but out loud and with their mouths.11 Her favorite show was “Action Dogs Cyber Force.” The dogs had a rivalry with cats, but they rivaled humans in power. They flew airplanes, and space planes, and sea planes, and shot lasers. They conducted acts of espionage and strategy. They were strong. They were dogs. They were her. She had developed an understanding with the human boy. When the surreal images came on the fantasy box, he was to make it show those fantasies. They were to sit on the dark-toned carpet. The boy was to remain silent when Captain Mastiff was talking, and she would tolerate his lack of petting when the Action Dogs encountered the villainess Feline Fatale.12

A vacuum cleaner. A television. Directly translated here for nuance. 11 This is a dangerous imagining of a pre-revolutionary dog identifying with what is now known as racist animation materials, but at the time would have been some of the only media featuring animals as holding any element of status. 12 Captain Mastiff and Feline Fatale are characters done with an outdated and outlawed character design which uses human sex characteristics for passive and instant communication of the sexual-social status and level of beauty in a character. Cultural Materialist Jeremy McCusker writes in his essay “Furries of the Internet Age” that the 21st-century mind was anywhere from ignorant of the sexualization of anthropomorphized cartoons by fanatics who used this art style as a means of creating sexual and nonsexual identities. They were seen as deviants for different socio-political reasons than today. 9

They had other understandings. He knew when she wanted to be pet and when she wanted to be scratched. She knew when to “purr.” He knew whether she wanted food or to go to relieve herself. She knew when he needed some compassion. She knew to stop at the door when he would leave. He knew to always come back to her. They couldn’t talk to each other, but they understood. One day Roxie was playing Action Dogs. In her mind, she was the first mate of Captain Mastiff, and she was leading an important away mission in the Action Dogs flagship craft the Sirius 2. Feline Fatale was on her tail and firing energy shield penetrating torpedoes. The only escape was the No Couch. She was trusted to transport the plasma from Quadrant Delta. Roxie needed to do something quick or the Action Dogs would run out of power at Cyber Force HQ and lose life support and die. She loved the Cyber Force. They were an imaginary family to her. She was willing to make the sacrifice for her loved ones, to protect them. After accidentally ripping a hole in the No Couch with her claws, the mother put Roxie outside. At first Roxie thought the door had accidently closed without her. She didn’t realize that the area outside of the human house and between the planks of the wooden fence would be her new dwelling box. Lying on a welcome mat, Roxie could hear the theme song to “Action Dogs Cyber Force” playing from the fantasy box. How could one action define her? She hurt the No Couch and suddenly became an outside dog, bad, broken, and ruined? Ruined. That word reminded her of her mother, the black Labrador whose genes marked her fur with the black spots. Her white and middle tones and pointed ears came from her father, the animal that ruined her mother. In a way, he was the animal that ruined Roxie. She found herself looking at the black spots more. For some reason she remembered her brothers and sisters crowding bowls for dry food. Roxie just went to the food pourer and whimpered. The food pourer would make an impromptu pile just for her. Roxie’s mother saw this and said, “Well, aren’t you the smart one?” Roxie’s tail wagged. The black lab’s tail never wagged, “Stay dumb. Dumb dogs can be fooled by and happy with delusions their entire lives. Don’t see through the game. Once you learn about the game, you learn you’re nothing more than a bitch.” Roxie didn’t understand then, and she didn’t understand after ripping the No Couch. What delusions? What games? She didn’t understand anything. She was exposed in the light with her eyes closed. Nothing made sense. Maybe she was dumb, but it didn’t bring her any happiness.

New Understandings Roxie’s new dwelling box was bigger than inside the home. There was a detached garage and a path leading up to it. She would get petted when the humans brought things to and from there. She had a plastic, turtle-shaped kiddie pool to drink from and, on hot days, play in. In the direction the sun rises, the gazebo in the backyard seemed to have the single purpose of being something for her to be tied up to. In the direction the sun sets, there was a patio with tables and chairs and a television. The family would have large parties on holidays. They would eat meat and the boy would remember to bring her some. She also had a small dwelling box of her own for when the weather was bad. The understandings changed. She could jump on the boy, because when the boy came outside it was time to play. She did not jump on the woman, but she would escort her to the nonadjacent garage. The woman would let her in the garage in case there were any burglars or other baddies inside. Roxie didn’t jump on the man whose split lip has long since healed and been forgotten about. When he came out, she was to walk to a corner of the yard where a rope was tied to the gazebo, sit, and stay while he would clip a carabineer to her collar. This happened about once a week. If she complied, she wouldn’t be kicked, and there would be brief head scratches. And every day one of them would pour food in her bowl and add water to the turtle kiddie pool for her. Most of the understandings she had with the boy were gone. They couldn’t watch TV together. Even though there was one in the backyard for entertaining company, the boy didn’t think about watching cartoons with the dog.13 As years went by she stopped hearing the theme songs of cartoons through the walls of the house. But she would lick his fingers through the white gate before he would leave, and he would always come home again. His fingers tasted like the food she could never have. On a September evening when the weather was cold enough for the windows to be closed, Roxie figured out how to use the outside television. She kept the volume down. It wasn’t like she was ever told “no,” but pressing her snout against the power button filled her with the same fear of the No Couch. She couldn’t get the fantasy box to show her “Action Dogs Cyber Force.” The fantasies were mostly tiny humans asking for money and war documentaries. Roxie was not included in the economic system, so she learned about war.

Cultural Materialist John Spangle assures the translator that this is not willful discrimination, but that the early st 21 -century mind would not have thought to entertain a dog with commercial broadcasts. 32

The Mountain of Freedom Birds would visit, even though she killed some of them. They were just a fact of her life. “Do you have time to talk?” a raven14 asked Roxie one time. Lying down, tethered to a gazebo post she replied, “Are you mocking me?” “No, what an idea, mockery. Yes, I just wanted to know if you’ve heard of the Mountain of Freedom.” “I can tell by where you’re standing that we both know how long my leash is here so just steal my kibble and go like the other birds. You don’t have to make an entire television show about it.” “No, no, I don’t think the humans would put your food outside of your reach, no. Yes, it does seems at the moral worst cruel and the moral best counter-productive. Yes, I might steal your food today, but I’ll be in your teeth tomorrow. Yes, yes, if not tomorrow then one tomorrow, yes?” “You’ll never know unless you try,” Roxie said, baring her teeth. It made her tail wag. She translated the catchphrase of Captain Mastiff. His words went through her mind, and she remade them. They were hers yet his in some sort of paradox.15 Although, it had been years since she had seen those surreal visions and his perfect snout, she still had a connection with him. She was more like him, even if just a little bit and for just one moment. She was closer to being like the leader of the Action Dogs Cyber Force of Quadrant Alpha and less like a mutt who was the wrong colors in the wrong places and tied to a gazebo. Raven cocked his head around as if looking for an actual threat. “I’ve come with an opportunity. Yes, yes, an opportunity at happiness. What if I told you that I can buy you a place in Freedom Mountain? Look, look just over the gate.” The bird pointed his wing towards the mountains in the north. “See it’s real. It’s right there with the white letter “t” on the top. Yes, I mean, no, I did not make it up.” The black bird pointed a wing at the dog’s collar. “Did you know that dogs are free up there? Yes, yes, they roam as equals.” Roxie cocked her head and squinted, “Why should I believe you?” The bird squawked, “My, my, aren’t you the smart one. Well, you think you have me beat. Don’t think you are my first skeptic, no. Well, you cannot disclaim a simple truth, yes, a truth that cannot be disclaimed, a simple fact that I have been there and you have not. But, but, I can make sure that you can go there for two pieces of kibble a day. One to take as your payment into the Mountain of Freedom, and another I take as payment for my services. The price is so little, yet you gain so much.” Scholars are still puzzled as to why there’s a talking bird in this piece. It is also unclear whether the dog understands the bird or whether the bird is speaking canine. This singular fabulist element begs a suspension of disbelief from the reader. 15 Personal note: This is the translator’s favorite passage. 14

“Will my family go too?” “Why? So they can put you in a box? Fascinating, do you prefer to be in the box?” “I’m loved here.” Raven laughed, “Why don’t you come over here and say that? Yes, now I am mocking you!” “It’s the price of love. I’m the toughest. I have fur for the cold and teeth to fight evil, and they keep me out here to protect them and in return th-they love me…and stuff.” “How many years ago did you make up this fiction, dog?” “It’s not fiction.” “Look at the tallest human. It is having all of that fun digging in the dirt, and you are tied up and have to watch it. What happens when you dig, huh?” “I get told ‘No.’” “Hmmm? Seems like they just hate you. You’re not good enough for their privileges like digging.” The raven hopped a waltz in small triangles, “The middle one won’t hug you like it hugs the others, because its clothes are more important than you.” The bird stopped hopping, “The small one hasn’t been outside lately, no, no. It has been too busy with a kitten it found.” The dog’s pointed ears stood at full attention. “It lives inside the nicer box.” How could a bird know something like that? It was a lie. The boy loved cats; his dog knew this, but how would the bird? Roxie stood up with a growl, “I will give you five pieces of kibble a day if you never speak to me again, bird. That’s what you want, yes, yes?” The raven laughed, “Now, who is doing the mocking? The deal is brokered, yes, yes. I mean just ‘yes.’” He pecked at her food, “We’ll start today, yes?” Ears back, teeth bared and tail up, she watched him. As he flew away, something strange happened. It was like she had just been assaulted. Her food was ruined. The sight of it made her queasy. She smelled like yellow. Her collar seemed tight and the leash short and her heartbeat shallow and labored. She had had enough of the gazebo’s oppression. “I need help!” she barked at her human. “Roxie! Quiet!” he shouted. She tried again and again, but only got different and angrier versions the same response.

“May Happiness Come With Your Food” A stray came to the gate as they often do, but this one lingered. He was white and mid-toned and spotted like Roxie but differently spotted. Roxie has black on her paws and face. This dog had more of a Dalmatian look. “I come with no ill intent,” the stray said. It didn’t smell red or yellow. It smelled male, recently mated. Feral dogs speak a higher dialect. Roxie spoke with her tail between her legs and made an effort, “As long as that’s true, you will find no harm.” The stray chuckled at her accent. They always did. Roxie suffered it in quiet dignity. “Bitch, why aren’t you in heat?” his snout sniffed through the door. “You are not among a higher status than me,” Roxie mumbled, “This is territory of my possession. You are a guest and thus beneath me.” She raised her lip at him, “Unless you wish to solve this with teeth.” “All pets are among the bitch class, bitch.” He lifted his leg and urinated through the metal gate, adding tone to its white paint. Roxie had to step back to avoid being marked. “As far as I can smell, nothing beyond this gate is yours. You were uncouth in the face of courtesy, so now you find yourself vis-à-vis your host. You are now a guest in my territory, bitch.” Roxie lowered her tail and her head, “I withdraw my challenge, sir. P-please welcome, I mean, I come with no ill intent, or that is, I live here with no ill intent.” “If your words are true, your body will find no harm,” the feral replied. “Now, answer a simple inquiry. Why are you not in heat?” “I have been spayed,”16 she said. The stray’s ears went flat and his tail limp. “I’m sorry. They have taken everything from you.” “What did they take?” “Puppies and love,” the feral said, “You are mutilated.” “I have love, and I’ve never had puppies,” she began to laugh at the idea, “How could someone take away from me something I’ve never had?” She didn’t know what the word mutilated meant, but he said it like the word “ruined,”17 and it cut into her like a veterinarian. Can anybody stop being ruined?

Most versions of this oral text use the borrowed word for “spayed” to highlight her otherness from the feral dog. Though commonly accepted versions use the native dog word for “castrated.” 17 The words “mutilated” and “ruined” are near homophones in the dog language. 16

“What is your name, bi-…I apologize I mean, ‘What is your name?’ I will have a female name an offspring after you. It will extend your life in a way. It is the least I could do for the less fortunate.” “I am honored by your kindness,” She said, though she actually resented him. “But perhaps you can answer an inquir—um, a question instead.18 Who pours your food?” “I do not understand. I apologize; I do not converse with many pets. Those words are new to me.” “How do you eat?” “You find food or you kill something.” “Doesn’t anyone yell ‘no’ at you?’” Roxie asked as the man came out the front door. “Hey! Get out of here!” the man stomped the ground in the direction of the stray. “May happiness come with your food!” the feral spoke quickly before taking off. Roxie yelled the idiomatic reply, “May food come with your happiness!” Roxie was 30 years old19 but for the first time she thought about those words. She must have said this goodbye hundreds of times, but every other time it had just meant “goodbye.” This time it meant, “May food come with your happiness.” Why are pets told “May happiness come with your food” and ferals “May food come with your happiness”?

Translated here as “inquiry” is a word in Feral. “Question” is the synonym in Pet. It is unclear whether Roxie code switches here due to ignorance or a sudden loss of confidence. 19 Four in human years. 18

The Silent Majority That month the war show on PBS was covering the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. The narrator’s voice talked about “the silent majority” and its use to dismiss the protests against the war. This made the dog pace through the backyard. Was she like Richard Nixon? Was she ignoring something that was shouting at her? “May happiness come with your food.” Did it? She had food. She always had food. She had enough food to share. The people give her love and food. Food is the proof of love, and love is happiness. But why then would a dog say, “May happiness come with your food?” It didn’t make sense and the pads on her paws were raw, but she couldn’t stop pacing. The sun was coming out. She needed to figure it out. She needed sleep, but there was no way she could sleep if she couldn’t stop pacing. Perhaps there was a fallacy. Maybe love wasn’t happiness. Maybe food wasn’t love. Love was inside. Love dwells in the dwelling box, and Roxie was outside of it, in her own box. What was her box? What was in it? She couldn’t name most of the things: metal digging paws,20 the chewy deliciousness that will get her told “No,”21 infinite water worm.22 The tiny humans inside the TV didn’t love her. They were in their own box with each other. Roxie wanted to be included in a different box. Her family’s box. The box with the door they come in and out of on their way to the garage, giving absent-minded head scratches to their pet. The door. When the door opened Roxie could smell a cat, a female. There was a powerful smell of dander and litter box. There was rarely fur on the woman’s clothes, but she smelled like a litter box. They all did. The man had the occasional smell of cat saliva and hair on his hands. Roxie tried not to sniff the boy, because it just brought whimpers to her throat. How was the cat so good at not being ruined? Not being kicked outside? Maybe the cat was just luckier. Was love the silent majority? Did she just assume it was there because it justified her choices? “I need someone!” She barked, “Come outside, please. I know it’s not a very practical time for a crisis, but these kinds of things don’t wait.” She kept barking, “I need something from you. If you could just sit out here with me for a little bit, it would really mean a lot to me and put my mind at ease. I need to feel like I’m getting something for all the protection I give you. Please?” she had to bark for longer than she wanted, “This is important to me. Perhaps I should be above needing external validation, but a dog can only live on so little. I’m sorry if that was rude, or implied something negative about you, but I feel alone, and I need to know if I’m Richard Nixon.”

A shovel. Shoes. 22 A garden hose. 21

The boy came out in boxer shorts and no shirt. He was a young man now. When did this happen? She knew she saw him all the time. But it was this moment he wasn’t the seven year old with the plush cat anymore. “Girl, shush!” “Jason, I’m trying not to be mad at you. I just need you to come and pet me for a little bit. It’s not much to ask.” “Girl, be quiet.” “Why are you being cruel to me?” Jason put his hands over her snout and closed her mouth, “sssssssssh!” The smell of cat attacked her nose. How could he do that? Why would he do that? When he let go, she bit him. His blood leaving a taste of the metal digging paws in her mouth. She opened her jaws and darkness was flowing down his arm. He kicked her, “You stupid, bitch!” She began to purr. Roxie didn’t know why. She didn’t know anything at that moment. Was she trying one last time to show Jason that she could be a cat? Or was she expressing a type of joy that only the ferals have a name for, a name she would learn later: “sanguine catharsis”?23 She smelled red and licked the tooth where some of Jason’s skin stuck to her mouth. It tasted like the start of revolution. She wasn’t loved. She was just a bitch. Jason said it himself. It made Roxie tired of having food. She wanted happiness, whatever that meant.

The release of negative emotion through the tasting of blood. Not to be confused with “blood baptism” which is the solving of problems through spilling blood. 23

An Escape The family was unloading groceries from the white SUV. The woman took things to the garage. Roxie put her snout to the door of the family’s dwelling. She could smell fresh air. The front door was open. When the man made a trip to the garage Roxie stuck her nose in the door and slipped inside. It was a straight line from the backdoor to the front door through the hallway. Two of the three were outside. Tactical Officer Chihuahua might have elected to use stealth. Normally she might have gone for a similar plan. But this was a mission of opportunity and the waiting would only put her in further jeopardy. Only the boy was left, but what if he was now strong enough to hold her? She must be like Captain Mastiff and use power and speed. Just before escaping the dwelling box, she saw a cat and stopped. The cat hissed. Did she know how lucky she was? The cat had everything Roxie ever had or wanted. But the damned thing could only focus on how Roxie’s presence oppressed her. The cat ran to the living room. Roxie’s curiosity followed her. The cat was sitting on the No Couch. The white couch was covered with a giant white sheet. “You can’t do that,” Roxie whispered. Grabbing the sheet in her teeth the dog tugged it out from under the cat. The cat jumped down to the dark carpet. But Roxie had uncovered the hundreds of scratches and cuts dug into the leather of the No Couch. Her ears dropped. Cat claws were everywhere. Why wasn’t the cat ruined? The world didn’t make sense anymore. The front door opened. Maybe he heard the jingling of Roxie’s ID tags, but Jason dropped a bundle of paper towels and walked into the living room. When they saw each other, everything stopped. She smelled the scent of angry red few dogs ever learn, the shade of rage that your entire life has been an unjust lie. Roxie growled. It wasn’t a form of purring, this was a growl. The boy smelled of yellow primate adrenaline, but courageously grabbed Roxie’s collar with his left hand. He used his bandaged right hand for balance. She tried to bite her way out, but the young man was cautious. The dog calmed down and began to think like an Alpha Dog. She tugged left and right. Forward slightly and violently back with perfect traction on the dark-toned carpet. There was pain around her neck. She couldn’t breathe. He was going to pull her head off. Why did he bother to hold onto her so tightly? He already had the cat he always wanted. “Mom! Dad!” Jason called out. He shortened how much time she had to escape. When the collar came off it was just luck, or destiny. She ran out the northern facing doorway. Jason tried to grab her but had nowhere to grab. There was no jingling as she ran, just the sound of the pads on her feet pressing against the pavement. They came after her in the SUV, more persistent than she had anticipated. The sun was going down, and she was only building more of an advantage. She could hear 40

echoes of her name. She thought, “Why do they pick now to care? Maybe I should go home.” She began to emerge from an ivy bush she chose to hide in, but a thought emerged from her mind much quicker, “They don’t want Roxie. They want a guard dog. Something expendable to fight burglars.” She sunk herself back into the planter. Hours after the streetlights came on and the echoes of Roxie’s name stopped, she stepped out into the street. She smelled of yellow as she looked into the city lights among the dark horizon, then headed towards the mountains.

Hungry and Lost Her head hurt; her stomach was cramping like her legs after miles of walking. The world was so much newness: new smells, new sights, and new sounds, but her head was too hazy for any of that to be interesting anymore. She realized she never learned who poured the food out here. She smelled human foods passing by trash cans. Roxie needed directions. She walked down an alleyway, looking for a dog that seemed nice. She found one, a terrier. She walked a few steps towards him, but back pedaled. What was the protocol? Was she a pet or a feral? She scratched herself, when she couldn’t hear the jingle of her collar it became real to her that she wasn’t a pet anymore. “I come with no ill intent,” Roxie said to the terrier dog lying behind a dark wooded fence. “If your words are true, your body will find no harm,” the terrier droned without getting up. Roxie couldn’t remember whether that was the proper response. She forced herself to laugh at him, the way the ferals had laughed at her through the gate. “I’m looking for the mountain with a letter on it. It’s called the ‘Mountain of Freedom.’ The buildings are too tall for me to see it.” “They’re too tall for me to see over, too, bitch.” “Hey, look you’re the bitch! All pets are nothing more than bitches,” Roxie didn’t know how much of this was from her own recent epiphany from the back yard and how much was from her attempt to act feral, but the words were feeling increasingly hers. The terrier laughed and stood up, “Really? You’re going to come to my territory and talk like a stray with a pet accent?” “Y-you wouldn’t be so smug if you realized your oppression.” Roxie showed her teeth when she talked. Her headache and hunger pains made her quick to growl. The terrier stretched out his front legs and pulled himself into a standing position. “I can still see the indentation in your fur where your collar used to be,” the terrier said. “You’re just a lost dog.” She smelled red; she wanted to humiliate this dog the way the feral had humiliated her. “I came with no ill intent, as a guest in your territory. But you leave me no choice,” Roxie lifted up her leg and tried her best to pee through the fence. It mostly just dribbled down her other back leg. She couldn’t run fast enough, the other dogs in the alley had seen this exchange and were laughing. One raised his leg and tried to pee on her from inside his box. “Lost bitch!” it jeered. “Selfish bitch!” said a collie. 42

“Fake feral!” said a mutt. “You don’t deserve owners, bitch!” said a beagle. Roxie reached the end of the alley and howled back, “May happiness come with your food!” though now, she was without happiness or food. Maybe she was wrong to run. Roxie was disloyal. Was she a bad dog? Taking shelter in some bushes, Roxie told herself, “The status quo didn’t serve me, so why should I have to serve the status quo?” This was a quote from the evil villain from Action Dogs Cyber Force, Feline Fatale. It resonated with her now, sending chills down her tail. She knew she was a bad dog, but she wasn’t wrong. Right now she was just hungry. Holding her breath she pushed her front paws against the top of the trashcan. She knew knocking over the trash was a “no” at home, but she wasn’t at home. The trash can fell, revealing a plastic wrapped feast. She paused and listened to the apathetic silence. No one was coming for her. Taking the plastic in her teeth and pulling her head back, the trash spilled out. As she rammed her snout in, she yelped. Something sharp had cut her, making a bleeding slit on her muzzle. She realized she could get hurt. Who would help her? “Perhaps dependency is love?” Roxie wondered and then said aloud, “Kibble is for the birds.” She stuck her nose slower and pulled food from the bag.

The Cannibal The evening Roxie fled her backyard was the night of a new moon. Nearly one and a half lunar cycles passed before she climbed the Mountain of Freedom. The moon was waxing, and in five days it would be full. She had wandered the winding path to find freedom and happiness, but mostly found students from the Christian university below doing drugs. Tired and dehydrated, they went home, and Roxie emerged from her hiding place in the bushes. Underneath the giant cross, she expected some form of rebirth or baptism, like the episode where Feline Fatale lost her memory and forgot her battles with the Action Dogs, forgot her origin story, forgot the bitterness that made her a threat to the Alpha Quadrant. She became new. She became good. But that wasn’t here. It was just a giant, lower-case “t.” As she looked onto the lights of the city below, all she could wonder was which flashing light was the home with the cat and the boy who loved that cat. “Are you a lost dog?” a voice said in Pet. It came from a bush. “Announce your intentions!” Roxie spoke in her best feral impression. “You know the key to a good feral accent is not so much in the diction as it is in the vowels.” “Show your flea-infested hide or I’ll bloody it.” “Ferals don’t use contractions or adjectival noun phrases. The differences between dialects are really a socio-linguistic joke when you think about it.” She was baring her teeth and circled around her own tail so she couldn’t be surprised from behind. “You’re either very smart or very paranoid,” the voice said emerging from a different bush. He was large, even for a German Shepherd. Both dogs had the same pointed ears, but Roxie’s pointed ears only went up to his neck. He smelled unneutered. “Most dogs get fixated on the first bush I’m in; they don’t think that I might move.” “Announce your intentions,” she repeated, fur bristled. He circled around her, “What are you trying to hide from me with your fake feral accent? Your tail is twitching, like it’s taking all of your will power to keep it from between your legs. And how many feral females of your age aren’t in heat this time of year? But most of all, you smell yellow.” “What do you have to gain from harassing me?” she asked, “I can’t imagine you want to mate with me.” He lunged at her. She jumped back. The distance of a flea’s leg meant the difference between safety and blood. Another attempt from his left at her neck, but she mirrored his movement to her right. He tried again but she mirrored his actions once 44

more. The German Shepherd smiled, “You know to stay nose to nose. You’re slow, but that would change. But you’re smart and spirited, and I can exploit that.” Roxie panted, her heart going eight times faster than her breath. She smelled a shade of yellow. She had never smelled this shade before, but she could recognize it. It was the color of that comes with knowing you are living the moment you will die. “Please, leave me alone. I mean no ill intent. I’m just a lost dog.” “If you need a home, I lead a pack of semi-feral, lost dogs. We’re hunters and scavengers and sometimes cannibals.” “At best, I have mixed feelings about that.” “I have a dog at every bush and more dogs down the path. You can’t smell them, because we’re up-wind and on the high ground. One way or another you’re becoming a part of us.” The German Shepherd looked towards the city lights, “Or you can also jump off this cliff, but there’s a 50-50 chance we’ll be able to retrieve your corpse and eat it later.” “I ran away from my last home, where they never threatened to eat me,” Roxie said, inching towards the giant “t” trying to put a barrier between her and German Shepherd. Roxie suspected he was lying about the dogs, but he smelled a relaxed blue. Irritatingly like blue; it’s condescending and disrespectful to smell like that in a fight. He was at the edge of a cliff. She could push him off. The German Shepherd asked, “What are you thinking? Your eyes are darting everywhere.” Instinctively, Roxie shut her eyes. “What are you trying to hide? Are you thinking about murdering me? Oh, please, tell me how you plan on doing that or better yet show me.” It was like the season three finale of Alpha Dogs, “The Kobayashi Mew Part 1,” where Feline Fatal ambushed the Sirius 2, leaving its crew out-gunned, out-smarted, and without a place to retreat. Roxie wished she had seen the season four premiere to learn how they had gotten out of that mess. The German Shepherd took a deep sniff of yellow air and smiled, “What are you looking in such a dangerous place for?” “Food,” she responded, “and happiness.” “We have both food and happiness,” the German Shepherd offered, “I’m Rufio.” “Roxie.” “Hmmm, it might a problem to have two dogs whose names start with the same letter.”

“Why? Is your pack particularly inattentive and stupid?” She blurted out, wincing at the possible consequences of her disrespect. “Good point.” Walking down the mountain side, other dogs joined them, and Roxie learned something about herself: her need to be accepted outweighed her need for safety.