Area Of Dog Poem by G.C. Waldrep

In my travel closet the ghosts of autumn are hiding, waiting for a little light to
emerge from one of the smaller countries, the ones you almost never hear about,
that rotate on & off the U.N. Security Council like so many ferial days on a poor
man's calendar of saints. We want to love them, but we simply don't know
enough: how do they eat? What sort of clothes do they wear, vs. what sorts do
they manufacture almost exclusively for sale abroad? Were my ancestors, per-
haps, less provident than I would otherwise like to imagine? The ghosts of
autumn weave back & forth between old shirts & work pants spattered in paint,
breathing in deeply the dust, dander, each other: Permeable, they think, this deli-
cious interplay between life & not-life, between nationhood (qua nationhood) &
the long-term viability of native kinship networks. In the breezeway, somebody's
German shepherd has taken up what looks like residence but is probably a more
temporary occupation, something he'll remember less as fact than as a dim fable
of dank smells & whiplash horoscopes. The librarian's hair was a deep, unnatural
red, like an apple dreaming it was a picture of an apple dreaming it was a Camaro.
As we lose diacritical marks they are reincarnated: as children? orphans? poets?
It is interesting that you feel that way, the recording repeats, over & over as the
wheels of the night's vast automobile slows: It is interesting that you feel that
way, It is interesting that you feel, It is interesting, It is interesting, It is.