Rochelle Nameroff Yellow Dog Blues For half the morning I watched him running around his caged-in yard from one mesh wall to the next, paws up, the idea of a whimper not yet there inside that barking place we all know as the opening to the world. And so he paced, continuing to believe in a hole somewhere if he kept going, while the sun smiled down its empty sullen heat and the grass bent down in patterns. Then a sickly bleat of sound came out and kept on coming, forsaken, not to be overheard though I heard him, a sound like the one before the rifleshot when the bowels drop their shame and everyone watches, knowing it could be them and knowing it's not, could never be, and therefore glad, shoulders leaning to blend into the group who stand there, a silent cheer going up. Did he expect me to let him out? He wasn't mine.  I barely even knew whose form I was, my own or a stranger on a tour, whose eyes looked older, less able to take in the light without a hand to make it shadow. And so I listened, head down and furtive, as if by now I was hearing someone who knew there was no audience, no other, a low sound then, beautiful and pure, and finally a large blank gap as he took a long time to give up.

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