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Nine is the K-9's number,
and it’s the nines that hold the show
first a nine-field of Venetian women
numbered I-IX, each named Betty
a ninery, a ninnery
a winery, a winnery
wasted by Golgotha’s withering winds
the crucifixion wears no finery
nine asparagus stalks, bronze beaten to knifeblades
arranged in an equilateral triangle
the nine muses
sent to confuse us
we shuffle to the base and gaze
toward the apex where the flattest one stands
the queen of flattness
an icepick for a nose
then comes the K-9
the cruci-fiction cost him his eyes
but his nose still knows
knows the ground, follows the scent of totality
a.k.a. truth or consequences
and what he knows is not people
he doesn’t give a shit about the social
not a shit about the dreams on the floor
dropped between the legs of young art majors
what he nose instead is an ancient odor from the house on the hill
where General Nogi spilled his guts
marking the end of Meiji
the dog seeks his place in all this shuffle
among the feet of the privileged nation
he wishes people still smoked
at least there’d be butts on the floor
instead of farts among the peanut hulls
this dog is more ourselves than we are
we give him the floor as the throne of belief
as the Egyptians gave and took from dogs
their access to heaven
not mentioned here are the nine circles of Dante’s hell
the nine months of human gestation
the nine Egyptian deities who in the Osiris story
judged whether Horus or Set should inherit Egypt
a regular who-done-it that can be compared to The Nine Taylors
a Dorothy Sayres mystery from 1934, her ninth featuring Lord Peter Whimsey
without the -h- thus “wimsey” as in “all wimsey were the borogoves”
al perro flaco todo se le vueven pulgas
the skinny dog gets all the fleas
the closer I get to something, he said,
the more distant it becomes
if he’s thin enough even his shadow flees
like the poet he nose to stop short of making scents
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