new dog

Centollella is dead.  The poor poet reduced into shreds
the mutilated book under the couch.  I should have but did not
have heart to punish the guilty, the dog
who also tore limb of bag, face of slippers 
belly of the couch.  Such threat this canine

having survived a world unimaginable at the downtown parking lot
given to me by two German women, foster parents themselves
of local street dogs, breed I've never had before.

A different how in loving I am yet to know
this little dog who bites in play and affection
who eats her meals with the lived memory of starvation
who curls herself in sleep, little feral in fetal position.