The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Requiem for a Robot Dog by Lauren Scharhag

This selection, chosen by guest curator Heather Leigh, is from Requiem for a Robot Dog by Lauren Scharhag, released by Cajun Mutt Press in 2019.

Today’s feature is a selection of several shorter pieces from Requiem for a Robot Dog.

Koan

Indecision in the morning,
Action in the afternoon,
Regret at night.

Varanasi

Goats lock horns on the ghat,
One light, one dark.
I like to think they’re dueling for the fate of the world,
But the truth is, they care nothing for our sacred space,
The tourist boats scudding along the water.
They know only the musk of their opponent,
That one will come off the victor and go
In search of grass.

The Descent

Gaffes, length of rope, miner’s hat, canary
Into the suffocating places
Nothing soft, not even the air yields.

Dashed on the Rocks

If I were light, I wouldn’t be a star.
I’d be the flickering pink-and-blue of an all-night sign
Luring, like sirens, the thirsty to their ruin.

Cicada

I do not fear the dirt and the darkness.
I thrive in the snug pockets of the earth.
For 17 years, my soul lies fermenting,
To rise, s hed my carapace,
And join my brethren in song.

Venn Diagram

we lay,
limbs entwined,
forming circles and arcs
with our bodies:
commingled breath,
a union of common need.

Papaya

is what they call the little one
germinating in her belly.
Seeds within a seed,
a thousand dreams clenched softly
within that still-green fruit.

Lauren Scharhag (she/her) is an associate editor for GLEAM: Journal of the Cadralor, and the author of thirteen books, including Requiem for a Robot Dog (Cajun Mutt Press) and Languages, First and Last (Cyberwit Press). Her work has appeared in over 150 literary venues around the world. Recent honors include the Seamus Burns Creative Writing Prize and multiple Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominations. She lives in Kansas City, MO.

Heather Leigh is a queer, disabled writer and editor who has been working within Chicago’s publishing world for more than twenty years, editing poetry for the likes of Curbside Splendor and reading prose and poetry for Uncanny Magazine. She has recently began to focus on her own publication goals between semesters teaching English, writing, reading, and journalism at various midwestern community colleges. She is a three-time SAFTA fellowship recipient, a multiple resident of Firefly Farms, and most recently had a speculative horror story published in Bloodlet, an anthology by CultureCult Press. She lives in Chicago with a retired cage-fighting poet, two rescue cats names after Buffy watchers, enjoying life with the family that caught her by surprise.