The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Dogwitch by Catherine Rockwood

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The fifth thing

I love about hounds is their living skulls.
Short glossy hairs
lie close to the bones of their faces
so the orbital socket of each active eye casts shadows.
A hound is a moving sculpture of appetite.

I cherish the points of their cheekbones, almost as sharp
as the white teeth that lie behind generous curtains of muzzle
above long jaws with flews like opera capes.
Where you like to see excess expressed is a personal thing.
I prefer when it’s pointing toward the gullet.

I suppose there’s something in this of my twentieth century.
The thin, knobby noses of father, grandfather.
A wiry white arm bulked up at the top-browned forearm
and heavy on elbow-joint.
                                                  That tells me I’m home,
had better watch out for what might, or might not, come.

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