JACQUELYN MALONE
USA

Jacquelyn Malone has been a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship grant in poetry. Her work has appeared in POETRY, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cimarron Review, Cortland Review, Ploughshares, and Poetry Northwest. The poem published in the Beloit Journal was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. One of the poems published in POETRY was featured on the website Poetry Daily. Her chapbook All Waters Run to Lethe was published by Finishing Line Press this summer.

A Dog Barks

 

A dog barks from the house next door
like the dog that barked from a neighbor’s barn.
Through decades the bark comes back
with nothing to distort it, coming clear
down Beacon Street and around the Circle,
bringing with it the smells
of ironed batiste pajamas and frying okra.
On this first night the August air is cool
it comes through white curtains that filter nothing
while the house slides along on the continent
and the night passes through the Perseids
that flare for seconds toward earth,
and Betelgeuse, as large as our solar system,
is reduced to a star. The dog is still calling
as if over the O’Connell’s hill,
the same bark again and again

Published in the chapbook “All Waters Run to Lethe,”
Finishing Line Press, 2011

 

 

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© Copyright, 2012, Jacquelyn Malone.
All rights reserved.