The Wild Dogs and Flowers of Texas 

Spent this morning’s still darkness making a list of the names of wild flowers. I don’t know why I did that: I have a wild flower book. I hoped it would add up to more than a list. I wanted to say a significant thing, but instead I went fluorescent. The names made me garish

in another direction. Lonely, I am without my people in Ohio. Saccharine? Maybe. Yes. Though not insignificant—at least not to me. And these people in Texas, who I am currently always with, are good people—the best in Texas. I would venture to guess, so I am lucky to be,

if only briefly, so near them. But now the dogs are crying, which is my cue to take them out, or if I don’t, they will ransack the house. It isn’t because of anything I said or didn’t say. Most things aren’t. The dogs have to defecate. The dogs need to urinate. Mostly they just want to play.

They are tame wild things, often sleeping all day on a rug by the door, or on the bed of the good people, the best people in Texas, whom I live with. In the side yard there are rocks. There is dirt and the toys are made of rubber for the dogs. The run is so large and white the whole sky is white, no blue and no green and

no clouds and no darkness. I sit under an umbrella while the dogs run around, happy to be out with their tongues hanging out, and I think about wild flowers, but none in particular. I only know the names, not identifying features, and I wonder if this is somehow the most of my life. I have words,

but not the world. I have names in garish colors. But these names make me happy while the dogs run around. I list them in my mouth, but the list is not important. The dogs’ names are Sarge and Chupacabra and Lotti. Wild dogs and flowers fill my whole field of vision. Sometimes they come when I call.

Matt Hart is the author of nine books of poems, including most recently Everything Breaking/for Good and The Obliterations. Additionally, his poems, reviews, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous print and online journals, including Big Bell, Columbia Poetry Review, Harvard Review, jubilat, Kenyon Review, Mississippi Review, POETRY, and Waxwing, among others. His awards include a Pushcart Prize, a grant from The Shifting Foundation, and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. He was a co-founder and the editor-in-chief of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking & Light Industrial Safety from 1993-2019. Currently, he lives in Cincinnati where he teaches at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and plays in the band NEVERNEW.

“The Wild Dogs and Flowers of Texas” was originally published in Bat City Review Issue 9.