By Nathan Lemin
The day before the man was evicted, animal control came and the police wrote him a ticket because it was the second time they said, and this time his dog jumped and bit the back of his downstairs neighbor, but only because she turned around just in time, for the dog was trying to eat her cat, which she’d scooped up in her arms as soon as she saw the dog run out of his apartment, and the man wasn’t paying attention, but when he heard the scream he came out and beat his dog bad, so animal control took it to get put down, and I swear I heard it say as I needled the neck scruff:
“I run a lot every day the bike is scary because I pulled it on myself but I get to eat turkey if I run next to it but not if I run next to cats I don’t know why but I haven’t been hungry in the morning sometimes the man gets angry when I don’t eat so then I eat to make him happy the man put a can in my yard filled with smelling things and the cats steal from it and we go to the lake now so I swim and eat the fur feathers poop on the ground it’s cold but good cold I love when the man looks at me.”
Nathan Lemin is the private chef for a couple of mutts and obsesses over liminality in Northern Arizona University's MFA in Creative Writing program.
Art by Michaela Sullivan.