A Dog Shit Poem

for Alli Warren and Catherine Meng



I am incubating some dog shit in the yard,

next to the dead bird and its wing. My gaze

is tugging on one and then the other.

When I come out the next morning the pile of shit

is bigger than the message of complaint that's left

in my mailbox by the neighbor, even

though it's his dog that put it there

for the sake of poetry. The bird has

nothing to do with poetry, the wing

even less so, its only function being

to point to the shit on the lawn.