Bill Hollands

Dogs

Those were the days that dogs ran wild.
Shit everywhere. Not unusual to meet
their end from a speeding car. My parents
made me take one last look at Twinkie
laid out on a blood-flecked towel
in the back of the family station wagon.
Then we got Spooky. I’m not saying
we weren’t sad, I just don’t remember
dwelling on it. Still, it was something
to see, old Twinkie struggling for a few
final breaths. Last night my son
got into a wreck. Not a tragedy, nobody
hurt. Rain, curve in the road, teenager,
what can you do? But the more we
looked at it, the worse it got. No tire
should come to rest at that angle,
for example. When we confirmed
it was a total loss, he said I made
a mistake and the blood rushed away
from his face. There are places
the imagination should not go. Today
I returned. I wanted to see it in daylight,
maybe clear up any debris. I ran my hand
over the cold light pole, stared down
at bits from the shattered headlight
as they blinked across a gash of mud.

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Bill Hollands’ work has been featured on The Slowdown podcast and has appeared in such journals as The Adroit Journal, The Greensboro Review, Rattle, DIAGRAM, North American Review and Boulevard. He was recently named a finalist for New Ohio Review’s NORward Prize and Smartish Pace’s Erskine J. Poetry Prize. He lives in Seattle with his husband and their son.