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Daniel Roy Connelly: a poem



Sock Puppet


It turns out the dog needs to stand on his hind legs to enter me.

I say his because the dog is clearly gendered and swollen.

I say enter me because he's going in everywhere,

suffusing me skin-tight with his slaver in a darkness

so thick it's almost physical.

That's more like it, he says, operating my eyelids.

Where did you go, I ran for the stick, you disappeared?

You owe me, he says, driving his claws into my fingers.

You underrate me. He drops my chin to my chest, curls his pastrami tongue into my throat. I want to bite myself.

It's like I'm wearing a town coat but that's the only bit of me.

Dog moves my legs across the room to dim the lights,

whispers in unaccented Italian, Let’s get you pinned.

I'll never be old enough to tell the truth of what Dog does to me.



Daniel Roy Connelly is the author of Extravagant Stranger (Little Island Press, 2017) and Donkey See, Donkey Do (Eyewear, 2017). He lives in York.

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