The Singular Beginning of Your Smile

my love is building a building
around you,a frail slipperyhouse,a strong fragile house


I grew up in small town Montana in the era of cats you didn't feed and dogs chained to backyard trees, which maybe is still the current era for small town Montana, but it's been a long time since I was growing up there.

I loved those dogs. Those half-wild things that would pant and pace in the house, more comfortable in the fenced half acre. How I'd quick, walk to buy them cans of Alpo on increasingly dubious credit. How Ken at the Market would fold his arms over his chest and joke, Buying dinner for your dad? and how my dad would always call him an asshole, but I didn't know if he was joking.

When I was seven or eight I worried about my dog, thought it wasn't right for her to be chained outside through the Montana seasons, sometimes all four of them in one afternoon, or so they say. I wanted to give her something. I wanted there to be something that was hers. So with all the haphazard industriousness of childhood, I cleaned out my old playhouse.

It was made of plastic, thick white double-paned plastic walls with a green plastic roof, designed to look like shingles. Plastic windows with yellow plastic shutters, and a plastic red brick chimney clinging to the side.

a skilful uncouth
prison, a precise clumsy
prison(building thatandthis into Thus,
Around the reckless magic of your mouth)

My little house had fallen into disarray. It was dirty and spider-ridden, all webs and dead leaves. Sweet smell of decaying leaves, thick dust and rain-river streaks of dirt. I dragged the garden hose into the backyard and spent that afternoon, that hot afternoon, scrubbing and spraying and transforming that little house into a proper shelter. When I was satisfied, I dragged it over beneath the tree. The tree where the dog was chained. Where the chained dog had dug out her dog-sized hole between the thick gnarl of roots, and spent her hot afternoons panting and snapping at flies.

Inside that house I put her water bowl, a heap of blankets, a bowl of kibble. Calling her over, she hesitated outside that red plastic half door, swung wide open on its plastic hinges. Come on, Mogwai. This is for you, a real home for you. She didn't trust that house, but she did trust me. I lured her in, patted the blankets so she would lie down and feel comfortable and know that I loved her. She inspected the blankets. Inspected her food and water bowls. Stretched out on the one bare patch of grass inside that plastic house, which did not have a plastic floor.

She was stretched out there, panting, looking at me in a way I took to mean Thank you when I noticed some spiderwebs I'd missed. I didn't think, I just slipped out and grabbed the hose. Turned that water full blast onto the plastic side of that plastic house, where the dog was still chained to her dog-chain tree. I can’t imagine how that blast of water must have sounded from inside. What I do know is I realized I'd made a mistake almost immediately. What I do know is she burst out of that swinging red half door screaming.

my love is building a magic, a discrete
tower of magic and(as i guess)

Lately I've been feeling a lot like that dog. Like I want something nice but don't trust it. Or lately I've been feeling like that child me, wanting so hard for everything to be perfect that it ends up ruined. A spotless but still vacant house. I was never able to talk her back inside once the damage was done.

when Farmer Death(whom fairies hate)shall
crumble the mouth-flower fleet
He’ll not my tower,
                        laborious, casual

where the surrounded smile
                                hangs

                                          breathless