Afterglow_a dog memoir

by Eileen Myles

  In January I put my foot on the ground. I pick it right up right cause they salt the sidewalks in New York. In February I see you pacing … trying to figure out if you love enough. You don’t. In March I’m wandering over mountains with goats. I’m looking at their triangle devil faces that always look like the end of the world. Know what I mean. Look at those faces. Goats are weird. I don’t want that cheese.

  I like the cheese.

  I know. In April I’m getting shuffled from one place to the next. I’m freezing, and I don’t understand where the sun is and my yard is gone. I don’t know where the ocean has gone. I don’t walk the beach. The rain gear’s awful—doesn’t fit. When I think of how unprivileged I was, how fucking poor, and now you have those two little brats. You did. That’s why I don’t know if Hank belongs in this book. The little yellow dog. Ugh. Little king. How many travelling bags does his majesty have. How much do you pay the dog-sitter. Don’t you have any friends who like dogs. Didn’t she.

  Eileen: Maybe this is not the place …

  Rosie: Oh yeah … very tasteful dog book. Look, we don’t even know who’s publishing it. I want this shit to stink of truth. I want it to sing. Speaking of which you know they actually made songs to go with tapestries. We should do that. I don’t know. Maybe. In the songs the voices would kind of chase each other and are “accompanied by a lute played with a plectrum.”

  Eileen: What’s a plectrum.

  Rosie: I figured it was a bone.

  By May everyone forgot how fast I was. I jumped up on the table and ate all the food. It was right there on plates. You were in the next room hating each other. Pit bulls are not bad. You’d do the same. Greedy pigs take everything. I’m in a box in the hold of the plane. It’s freezing then it’s so hot. I can’t even breathe. I am dying. Let this be known. My name is Tucker, I am a Great Dane, I am six years old and I am now dead. Thank you for this moment in eternity, Rosie. Airlines do not like dogs. American Airlines. So sue me.

  Dogs to them aren’t even luggage. Please. Put me on a boat. Leave me home. Let me die on the street. Just never on a plane. Not me, Tucker, your big tall gorgeous baby. Dead. I wish that woman’s hands were on my balls again. And I’m in a mine with a lamp on my head. That would feel great. I’m going to die. And I’m in my yard and I’m dead. And I’m watching them throw a whole lot of us, we’re things now, right? … into the incinerator. Whose dust is whose. Cremation is a fraud and you know it. Stop that faucet from dripping. Make the snow come cause I love it. The wild kingdom opens in my heart in snow.

  It’s June. It’s a waterfall. I’m on my motorcycle and I mean all summer with goggles. I wrap tape around my legs, leather tape, and I have headphones on which I know is crazy dangerous too. I’m riding up and down hills not far from the bay. I’m listening to Jeff Buckley. Hallelujah and I get pulled over. Officer I’m a dog. We’re in a cartoon. There’s orange dunes behind us and a smiley sun in the sky. The music is wailing. It’s wiggles. You know like those rays going out. I slept with Jeff once. Well a couple of nights. Him and Rebecca. He wasn’t exactly him yet but I was Rosie. He was a kid. I don’t change. I liked his smell. Dirt under one fingernail. Jeff had a cold. I remember. I slept with a lot of people. I lived in the era of friendship no money. Yet I died in a state of relative wealth.

  September my head’s in my bowl. You think nothing ever happened to this kid. We’re on the beach at Cherry Grove. Under an umbrella. I’m little really little and a wave holds its raised paw forever cause it’s nature. Stitch o’clock. The ocean’s this blue creature growling lion it’s bigger than me and I take a few quick chubby steps back. Everyone laughs and picks me up. I know some pictures were taken of that moment. Here they are in my soul. Drop em in. My infinite is a permanent spot. I rub my paw over the bumpy surface of these white clouds of mist up there and my own wide puppy eyes one early fall afternoon when it was still hot and circumstances and Jeanette carried us just once to that September beach.

  Pumpkins scare me. I get my kids all around me and I use the big butcher knife and plunge it in and their little puppy eyes are still with fear and excitement. I make a lid and I cut it out and then I make the kids stick their paws in and pull the orange guts out of the pumpkin. Do you want a funny pumpkin or a sad pumpkin or a scary one. Scary they all scream. I am sitting in school and the president is shot and we can go home early. Get this uniform off and run naked in the yard barking and yelling and having a ball. Do I care. I’m dirty now. Nobody has a dad now the whole country has none but if I was there I would have liked to seen his guts. I take a picture of that and hold it out forever strumming and wide. Stitch some red on his shoulder brains all polka dot and everyone returning to it again and again for years. It has to be very strong. I was in the car. Maybe I did it. What does car mean. Give me a liver chip. Give me ten. I want to fill my mouth with food. Look at me my big shark mouth full of purple food. I’m smiling. I’m history too.

  I have a big thick dangling chain around my neck. With a little lock like Sid. I got used in a presidential campaign believe it or not. I’m talking to the world now. This tube puppy body, this face. And by someone so stupid when she was twelve she had a Barry Goldwater poster hanging over her Hollywood bed because it was free. Big black and orange poster. I’d like a photo of that.

  I missed nothing having been free to wander through all of her eggs and cells and seeds going forwards and backwards forever. Her family of course her father back to Ireland my family any place I want to go. I’m putting pictures of him in here. And crowds of things pouring: the trellises dots and the landscapes. Guts and entrails. Finials and fruit. Futurity. We travel in dreams now. That’s why I’m so relaxed.

  I’m dopey cute. I look good on a button. You had that short Pekinese girlfriend she looked like a cat. She turned you on to cats. Very talented but deranged. She took the pictures and made a contact sheet of our afternoon before everything was digital. It’s December. Days when I’d steal a kid’s soccer ball and not give it back. What pleasure. Burst it like a grape. You bought so many. Take your jacket off. We’re in the schoolyard on 4th St. fooling around. I was young, about a year old, and even you, Jethro, you were a lot younger. You were like forty? Look at our joy, yaps wide open laughing and gleeful—we’re like World War II looking, a sepia innocence. Like Ewan Mac-Gregor that out-of-time joyful look. We all loved each other that day. Hard to know what’s memory. The picture locks it in.

  Remember Jethro and we walked to the printing shop on twenty-seventh with xeroxes of the contact sheet and circles penciled over them size of buttons and Vivien had typed slogans on them. At times it said nothing. She had an eye.

  When you think of it there really could be a whole tapestry just of our presidential campaign. And because of my looks and also because of my un-conflicted attitude I had waaay more celebrity than you ever did. Ha. Pretty disgusting. Remember the guy in Washington Square Park. Hey isn’t that dog running for President. And aren’t you doing something too? That was no joke. I was on MTV. When you travelled I was home making deals in the dog run, solidifying our stance. Getting the rottweilers behind us and the labs. Jack Russells. Even those little jerks. A pit bull works. That is my thesis. And I was always a political dog.

  To the Post Office

  I’m on my back and you’re rubbing my belly. I’m a singularity. I throw myself down on the sidewalk, start rolling, and people rub. People are not so separate. Liking is just a shape that anyone would flow around. It definitely explains popularity in art though some art some people really just love to hate.

  You couldn’t hate us. The smiling pictures turned up again and again. But look right here at the girl. Pure sepia. With a bow on her head. The O’Riordans—okay we’re in Ireland now and the O’Riordans handed you a picture. My sister—your Aunt Helen. This tiny girl with the bow (like a little dog!) is the crux between Ireland and America. She’s your father’s older sister [Turn it over: and we think she may’ve had an early death …] now we’ve got every
one of them sitting on the couch:

  Helen

  Nellie

  Ellen

  Eileen

  Eileen Lynch says it’s one name. It’s all the same. Least in Irish. Eileen’s 93 years old. She’s a weaver. Your great aunt Jane’s girl. Look all around her. Those flowers are voluminously real. Mille fleur. We embroidered your own sad line right here: I was your unicorn but you did not protect me. You were wounded. Okay Ulysses. So we’ll put your aunts and your sister and her wife and your lesbian friends and your mother. Put em all right here on the long purple dog couch. It’s 2005 and the whole gang is watching the L-word. When it was still funny. Havin’ a ball. Hooting and snacking. Women love to eat. The Irish do. In fact they insist. A starving island has to live out. This is a very beautiful part of the tapestry:

  Helen Nellie Ellen Eileen

  This is for you, Eileen but I’m thinking I’d like to stretch myself across those juicy laps least one or two. Snort. I’m being obnoxious. I’m being a dog. Little hipster guy in a teeny hat. Pal Rosie. Doo-do-do-do-do. I have this sexy canine swagger. I crawl up while they’re eating and watching television so they won’t even notice and maybe your Aunt Helen calls my name (Ro-sie!) like I’m too big to be acting so small. I’m a pit bull, Sister, I’m a pup. I’m a Staffordshire, Baby. I’m fifty, sixty pushy pounds of doggy love. Rosie they all laugh and that fast I shoot across three laps. I throw my paws in the air and I wriggle. I get some food: pepperoni, cheese, mouthfuls of chips, pats and some strokes. A pit bull is a charming homeless girl. Look at this smile. She is not afflicted. She takes it close and warm. Know, Doggies, and I’m talking to the puppies now—when you go to a party just think. You’re about this low …

  In tall rising weeds everywhere, like a forest all the legs in the world and especially on a big decorative rug the pup is looking up. Looking dumb. You learn a lot about what’s in the room from this position. Mostly you’re a pointer. We all have that same cartoon job. The pup turns his head. Or maybe I just go to bed. And everyone laughs. That’s my bed right there on the floor.

  I’m off to dreamland, Kids!

  If this afternoon were forever and it’s hot. And sticky and chafing under my collar so I lift my head. I wonder if I’ve ruined everything by sitting next to this tree in the dark and no one can see it or anything and it is covered soaked by rain. The whole picture’s covered in rain. It’s a wet dream. It’s so long in the future already and you fall back asleep one night and inside your dream you slip off into a cave. Inside the cave is a river and a boat. You get inside the boat and you’re paddling and you feel surprised to discover you’re very very strong when you felt weak for so much of your life. I’m free to just love you now in here. And I will just crawl inside you. I wonder who I am you smiled. A tiny lock over a grate is baking in the sun as the east heats up and one day that lock pops open. I’m dead you realize smiling. You start rowing harder and faster than ever before. You are all the ages you’ve ever been. And even the earth is opening now. If there were anyone there to watch you they would see a puppy girl paddling, an old dog woman and a young female kid. Not a goat. Each of them rowing as hard as the rest. You’re one person now. It’s like the accordion’s shut. You play that one note. One long beautiful note.

  And now everything’s gone—all our memories. Human history is gone. Even a tiny gravestone is covered when the monuments and boulders roof of the old medieval church and the hills and the whole world collapses widely and permanently into one crude pile. The valley is shoveling itself onto the city. There’s no god, no golden foot is now making its way crunching up over the mountains of stone and the torn apart cars and bicycles and streaming water rusting them tinkling in eternity and mud splashing over the surface of an orb, O poor baby Earth, you’ve been alone so long. The sun comes out and then that stops. It breaks and falls like an egg. It was never light in your cave. It was always dark in there. And you never were. Something’s happened. Look at the ground. It’s Judgment Day. Jeesh. Look at it. And now, look—! Those ants are going to hell!

  Okay you can open your eyes. The pit bull is watching the skyline. She’s whispering inside my head. She’s singing to me. One tree that’s all you need. Shaped like broccoli or cauliflower some rainy day. I’m glad I woke. Maybe I’ll make some coffee. She keeps whispering. One tree. That’s all you need. Start a whole civilization that way. One little piece grows it all. Feel the bump. And her paw holds my fingers to the weave. I don’t want to wake up. That’s it, she says. Every part grows from every other part. Feel it. Every tiny leaf on the tree is singing. Can you hear it. Yes. Alright now.

  And one day I answered the phone.

  The square thing was blinking on the floor. It always was and I’d feel your feet on the stairs, the door fling open and you looked down at the thing to see what it wanted. It was a part of a phone but it felt like a bank. I was alone so much in the beginning. Once I had a whole weekend by myself and covered the apartment in poop. It looked like little piles of rope. I heard you say that when you got home. I was so scared. I heard the telephone ring. It was on the floor and I’m small, I’m wee, and I pushed the receiver off the cradle with my nose. Yes. I could not speak. Yet I was not deaf. I recognized Tom on the other side. He has a very loud voice. He knew it was me. I said errroorahrah rah. Rah. I said erooo. I meant help me, help me. He said Rosie. I could hear him laughing. I said erroo. I’m not kidding. He didn’t know what to say. You can often feel this in the human. Outside their pattern. It’s all helplessness. Quiet. They don’t know how to connect. They can’t say errroooo. They can but they won’t. But if you watch them long enough they do. They say uh. They say mmm. They smack their tongue against the top of their mouth and hold their mouth open. They cast their eyes up. They do a deep huh. They shuffle the air out through their nose from the back of their throat. They take a quick breath in. They shake their head. They stomp their feet. They shake it again. They raise their eyebrows. They turn up the corner of their mouth. They suck the back of their teeth. Squeak. Like a bird sound. They sniff and then fall back in their chair. They spring forward. Nothing happens. They make these speeches all the time but they pretend it’s not happening. Intuition. The silent lesson. We know what they think. They felt the pounding of feet and hoofs on the ground from great distance. Though she was born alone very often he was not. There’s no way to prove the hairier ones were born in litters. In the time before ideas just drawings and sounds and she and he lived that way. She was the queen of course and he was her laborer. Her soldier and her farmer. She allowed herself to be impregnated many times. By different men. She communicated through looks what she meant and what he wanted and sometimes marks on the wall and she spoke through her eyes and the patterns of silence along the horizon. Humans were biped dogs. Are we one. I think so. In that tapestry you knew what I meant. It was the crowded room of the cave. The rain comes down and you go outside because you feel it. This is what it is to be a dog. Weather and feeling and knowing. That’s why you let us remain. You love how we walk around smelling things. How we’re always hungry. How we would have sex with anybody and how it’s very clear who we won’t have sex with. How it seems like we worship you. You love how a dog settles in and sits down. You love how a dog enters and digs. How a dog picks a place on the rug and scratches and circles around and lands and adjusts. Now I’m in the room. And now I look up. And you laugh. Why. Because of your deliberate apartness from yourself. And I always bring you back. Do you see what I mean. You wait and then you sniff.

  That yellowish tree down there by the lake is waving. You think it’s not communicating. Not as much as say that door down the hall. Slam. Not as much as the rooms. Go see Esther. That’s what it’s saying. Go see Esther. Go ahead. And you can’t have the dog. You can’t have Peggy. But you need to know about her. How is Peggy. How is the dog.

  September 10, 2013

  The dog’s meat makes me sad. Why didn’t I give her all the meat. All the milk—I didn’t drink the milk las
t night when I couldn’t sleep so I could have the milk now with my cereal & I don’t want it. There’s not enough time for anything and the sun is shining and life oh did I miss it, you, did I miss everything?

  Did I miss you—oh God—

  I fall into it.

  I heated the lamb for the dog and I ate it. Drank the milk, scrambled the egg and ate it too. Packed the orange juice.

  Good-bye and I coloured one little island out.

  Tell the story of Peggy.

  Okay. Peggy came to the door in the rain in September. I heard her whimpering. We will draw a small box in the bottom of the story and that area will be for Peggy’s story.

  I have not seen her again.

  Tell the story of Peggy.

  Okay. I let her in and she looked around. She was nervous. She was three colors, white black and brown. Was she smaller than me. She was. She was at that time but I have not seen her lately. Very large paws. Very large ears. A large wide snout of the Richard Gere variety that adds to the animal tenderness of the dark brown eyes. This brown is more of a variety of honey. She is not unlike the colours of Rosie though distributed differently. She will look well on the rug. I agree. Her fur was loaded with burrs and I picked each of them out. She seemed lost. She was a puppy (a large one) and it was raining out. May we have some blue rain on the tapestry. Angling down right here. Providing energy. I agree. Continue. I asked if she was hungry and I made her a pale yellow egg. Scrambled. She ate it nervously looking up. She liked that it was warm. More smelly. It was not entirely clear she wanted to be inside my small house. It isn’t in New York. It was Ireland.