Pickle Jar Love Poem

I am fascinated by your dog’s ability to find the filthiest
corner of the earth & bury her face in it.

Lodestar of trash.
Always so verklempt to be pulled away from

something foul.

The spring I become an open question,
we drive to the coast to witness one perfect sunset

before we have to turn around again. At water’s edge, a bed of muscles
flickering in the light. A flush of juniper along the bank.

And there, your dog
rolling in the foulest oil-patch-tar-stained-grease-well

the earth has to offer.
Fossicking for another, better mouthful of sand.

You parrot come. Parrot back please.

You with your pockets full of marrow
striking a bargain.

Which is to say, if the queerest form of resistance is
to survive, to insist on the future

& joyously—
your sickly dog dripping muck & mire & brackish wine

onto the rag we’ve laid over the backseat
is a pointy-eared revolution; when a strikethrough

is all it takes
to erase my body

& language has soaked me through &
spat us both out,

what is kissing in the pickle aisle
if not a political act? Meaning,

I still remember that first winter
finding reasons to shiver. The path glossy with ice

as I trudged my way through bog & sleet & deep indigo
to find you there, in the kitchen bathed in light,

dancing.