nickolas duarte

Canine for All Things Die

my dog
fat and gray-black 
deaf and strong-small 
grunts in his sleep 
wet nose buried
in a crocheted lavender blanket 

eyes hazed
with secrets of old age 
secrets he couldn’t explain 
even if we spoke
the same

I knew things
when he was young 
now I only offer food
and a warm body 
neither of which 
have much value
when he takes his fur-suit off 

and pays the two-coin cover

Cricket

there’s dried Gatorade
on the ceiling

an explosion! violent—

 kaboom, shhhhhh!!!!!

 my love is a house
there’s a cricket inside 
its violin legs playing 
the same songs it did
for my parents, their parents, 
our ancestors; a tune crooned 
by his father, his father’s father 
formed in the collective cricket 
unconscious millions of years 
in the past; during the day
it hides in a small crack
in the plaster wall, resting, 
waiting for its time on stage 

When you saw the cricket
you dropped the plastic 
bottle, it hit the tile, red
shot out across the kitchen— 
a sugary murder scene
from an 80s horror

The cricket has antennae,
alien yet familiar