POETRY
Naming by Patricia J. Miranda
I’m with my dog beneath the piano, and we’ve crawled here so he can die— chest heaving, eyes distant, the smell of him the smell of earth. And I say his name over and over because that’s what Adam taught: when things begin, there must be sound to set the bond between man as caretaker and beast as beast. How long it took. But at length his name, that sound, settled on something still, wrapped in the red nubby blanket we always shared whenever the night came on.
Patricia J. Miranda’s poems have been featured or are forthcoming in Bop Dead City, DASH Literary Magazine, Into the Void, The Literary Nest, Pif Magazine, and Yellow Chair Review. She lives in the middle of Ohio and wants to vacation in Middle Earth. 46
MOUNT HOPE • ISSUE 11