Tyhe Cooper
I, OF COURSE, AM THE DOG
How am I meant to when I can feel so immensely the gut punch of the love held among friends, the sex and excitement and sin (slurp!) of the song the rhythm completely incapacitating beyond the thought of a dark room with you and me both in it, and your back, your hips, the divots of them.
I know I say it all the time these days but God help me! I am a caricature of want!
Like a bone in the mouth of a dog, you are the bone, and the voice calling, and the leash, the thorn in the paw, the warm hands, the sun-hot rug.
DEATH POEM
I’ve got a friend who loved the song so much he dug his fingers into his abdomen and grabbed onto each rib cage and pulled, then when it rained he jumped into the air and stuck his feet out behind him, like diving into a pool, like a frog on a stick, still cold and jumping, and he held himself open
like this while he fell. He looked dumb and wet.
And he landed in the mud like it was warm in there, with his mouth open. He swallowed the mud with his stomach and his mouth open. He was dead like that, with the mud.
Tyhe Cooper is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn. His work has been published in the Brooklyn Rail, the Poetry Project Newsletter, Peach Mag, trilobite.bond, and elsewhere. They are the Production Editor at the Brooklyn Rail. Their Book of Joke was published by SLAB Editions in 2024.