"Something to Believe In" by Carl Phillips

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend July 31, 2019   Something to Believe In   Carl Phillips

My two hunting dogs have names, but I rarely use them. As I go, they go: I lead; they follow, the blue-eyed one first, then the one whose coloring—her coat, not her eyes—I sometimes call never-again-o-never-this-way-henceforth. Hope, ambition: these are not their names, though the way they run might suggest otherwise. Like steam off night-soaked wooden fencing when the sun first hits it, they rise each morning at my command. Late in the Iliad, Priam the king of Troy predicts his own murder— correctly, except it won't be by spear, as he imagines, but by sword thrust. He can see his corpse, sees the dogs he's fed and trained so patiently pulling the corpse apart. After that, he says, When they're full, they'll lie in the doorway, they'll lap my blood. I say: Why shouldn't they? Everywhere, the same people who mistake obedience for loyalty think somehow loyalty weighs more than hunger, when it doesn't. At night, when it's time for bed, we sleep together, the three of us: muscled animal, muscled animal, muscled animal. The dogs settle to either side of me as if each were the slightly folded wing of a beast from fable, part power, part recognition. We breathe in a loose kind of unison. Our breathing ripples the way oblivion does—routinely, across history's face.            Copyright © 2019 Carl Phillips. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 31, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. About This Poem   "As one who has long lived with hunting dogs, I think a lot about their power, their animal-ness, and how quick we are to put trust in domestication, and to forget the wild aspects even to a domesticated animal. 'Wild for to hold, though I seem tame,' indeed. And when I say domesticated animal, I also mean, of course, those humans, too, with whom we share a bed, a life." —Carl Phillips   Carl Phillips' most recent book is Wild Is the Wind (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2018). He teaches and lives in St. Louis, Missouri. Poetry by Phillips   Wild is the Wind (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2018) "The Silver Thread" by Afaa Michael Weaver "Again" by Ross Gay "Shooting the Dog" (audio only) by June Jordan July Guest Editor: Paul Guest   Thanks to Paul Guest, author of Because Everything Is Terrible (Diode Editions, 2018), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month's weekdays. Read a Q&A with Guest about his curatorial approach this month and find out more about our guest editors for the year. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038

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