Three spots still open in Plotting for Pantsers, Tuesday, October 3, 6-9:30 pm CT. For more details and to register, please click and scroll down. I’d love to see you in the zoom room!

The night we brought him home he sat on my lap, trembling, watching as we played gin rummy and drank Negronis. When I went to the kitchen he slipped a card off the draw pile and covered it with his paw. Then he took a sip of my cocktail. Now he’ s taught himself to speak Human and I’ve taught myself to speak Dog. We communicate via hoots, trills and barks on his side, tone of voice on mine, and without words we know exactly what the other is saying: Come out on the porch and sit with me, he says, and I’m going out for a little bit, but I’ll be back, I say.

Sometimes I put on music, pick him up in my arms and dance him around the living room. He loves it. So do I.

Moon, by Michael Bazzett

The night you climbed in bed and curled up close
because your hair’d been shorn and the cool
air of the winter house had found bare skin,
you fell asleep and grumbled into dreaming
like an old farmer after too much wine
until scrabbling toenails on the roof lifted
your head alertly in the dark. “Raccoon,”
I said. Your tail thumped twice under the sheets.
If you did not realize you were a dog
until that moment, I’m unsurprised. You looked
at me then said, “Imagine if I’d lain up there
in ambush.” Your glinting humor is so gentle
as to disappear at times, like how you fall
abashed when singing love songs to the moon.​ 

​Click here for more information about Michael Bazzett.

alisonmcghee.com
My podcast: Words by Winter