Poetry by Dion O’Reilly

                         Maria Rantanen CC



Democratic Convention 2020
 
When I think of a mongrel dog
like Laika, sent up with Sputnik 2
just a year after my birth, it is difficult
for me to believe there is any goodness in people worth 
voting for. Not even Biden who Old-Guards
swear “will restore decency to America” and whom
of course I will
vote for in an act of duty and desperation.
 
When I think of the hands, strapping that dog
into his small capsule, with a shit bag and enough gel dog food
to last a few days, snapping the chains that let Laika stand
or sit or lie down, when I imagine the dexterity of the human fingers
and the intelligence and cruelty, I can hardly stand to look at Biden
who was only a football-playing high schooler in 1957 and had nothing 
to do with Laika.
 
But before Laika was shot toward the sun, a scientist 
took the dog home to play with his children,
and I think of any happy time before death
or during great torment as a gift
we can give to each other, to anyone,
just to do it, for no reason other than the good need
to give because we realize we should share whatever sanity or means we have If we are decent human beings, like that scientist
who may have calmed the lifted hairs along the dog’s back
as he lay in the tight chamber, smelling 
that weird smell they say rockets have of
gun powder, rum, and seared steak. 
That scientist might have spoken softly to the dog in Russian 
because he was one of the most decent of the scientists, so I would have to vote for him over whoever came up with
the idea to shoot Laika into space, or maybe even enjoyed sending him there.
 
When I think of the countdown and the racket, how
that dog must have pushed against the chains and whined,
I feel a bit strapped in myself, a bit like I am hurtling into 
something so much bigger, so much outside of the thin
circling rim of atmosphere, thin like my own thin skin
that could so easily be burned away. I can’t help noticing
Biden has strong hands because he was a football player
so he probably has those kind of fingers
that could pull a pigskin into the gut
and run like hell and win. I think he might like to caress and sniff
my hair and brilliant the world around him with his teeth
and I might lick his hand 
in the midst of my chaining if he were
the one to care for me
on my last day. Yes, I might lick his hand because I can smell
his decency,
and I wish I could change our lives.

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Dion O’Reilly's first book, Ghost Dogs, was published in February 2020 by Terrapin Books. Her work appears in Cincinnati Review, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Narrative, The New Ohio Review, The Massachusetts Review, New Letters, Sugar House Review, Rattle, The Sun, and other literary journals and anthologies. Her poetry has been nominated for several Pushcarts and been shortlisted for a variety of prizes.  

​She is a member of The Hive Poetry Collective, which produces podcasts and events, and she teaches ongoing workshops on a farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains--now on Zoom.

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