Rebecca Seiferle is the author of four poetry collections, including Wild Tongue, which received the 2008 Grub Street National Book Prize in Poetry; Bitters, awarded the Pushcart Prize; and The Music We Dance To, which won the 1998 Cecil Hemley Award from the Poetry Society of America. Her first book, The Ripped-Out Seam, won the Bogin Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Writers’ Exchange Award from Poets & Writers, and the National Writers’ Union Prize. Seiferle lives in Tucson, Arizona, where she teaches in the English and fine arts departments.

Photograph by Melissa Buckheit.

Dogheart Dharma

by Rebecca Seiferle

Oh love is stupid but it’s true, all day I feel
as if I were a dog on a chain—you know, the way
they lie there, bored in their beings, as if their bodies
were loose skins full of emptiness, too alive
to truly fall asleep, too dead to be fully awake,

People on couch
To continue reading please sign in.
Join for free
Already a reader? Sign In