THE WAY
The fourth leg
of the dog
with now only three
was the
in-the-way one
he’d lift
in order to pee.
—from Rattle #62, Winter 2018
Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist
__________
Mike White: “Charles Simic has a wonderful poem called ‘Country Fair’ about a six-legged dog. My poem is about a three-legged dog, so the bar is set lower. I wrote the first draft very quickly and then toyed with the thing over the course of about a year. The ultimate title came toward the end of the process, and then I had to make changes to the poem that aligned with how the title was teaching me to read it. Then I gave up, and sent it to Rattle.”
