by Neil Carpathios
A dog out there at 3 a.m.
in the snowy neighborhood.
Does he bark to keep himself company?
Does he pretend the echo is some other dog
calling out to him?
Does he notice his milky breath
unspooling from his mouth
as he yelps, fascinated?
Does he imagine something
somewhere trying to translate
the dog sounds he makes?
Or is it enough to be
a thing among things
in the frigid universe
with his own unique anger or loneliness
and a voice to set it free?
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Neil Carpathios is the author of three full-length poetry collections—Playground of Flesh (Main Street Rag Press), At the Axis of Imponderables (winner of the Quercus Review Press Book Award), and Beyond the Bones (FutureCycle Press). Neil teaches and is Director of Creative Writing at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, Ohio.