Inside Books Written By Dogs With Horns

Inside books written by dogs
with horns my father is insulted,
my dead human father, a King.
(though he’s not specifically mentioned,
these books must be talking about Dad.)

The dogs that write the books lurk beneath-
they snarl, they sharpen their horns
on darkened walls in basements – the horned
beasts rendezvous in my cellar,
where once murky apricots filled glass jars,
where once I was a happy child
on a warm, slow afternoon, looking
through grandmother’s things-

The dogs with horns are in dungeons
of their own creation- they are
beneath me as I write to you -
scratching out wicked incantations
in their doggy-sized notebooks -
assembling a printing press -
distributing pamphlets among the
animal kingdom, publishing occultism,
animalism. I hear them conspiring, biting,
growling, feeding on the weak among them,
I hear them talking in barks.
My heart and throat tighten, the skeleton
inside my body trembles -
the sound of their claws scraping
against the concrete floor -
the weight of their language.