Among her first words  
is the Chinese for dog: Gou,
her catchall for the upside-down  
squirrels on the oak trunk,  
robins jouncing along yesterday’s  
stroller ride, as well as Donna’s  
cow-splotched border collie  
Labrador mix. Whatever stirs is  
gou pronounced nearly  
the same as the book Go, Dog. Go! 
by P.D. Eastman, pronounced  
nearly the same as  
the abstract strategy game  
I’ve never played but remember 
referenced in Gary Snyder’s  
poem, “Riprap,” about the victory  
of concreteness over  
abstraction, the human-placed  
rocks, brittle teeth gritted  
against the rising tide. At 15 months, 
Omi presses an animal figurine 
into the palm of my hand,  
crying, “Zebra.” 
                        

Donna asks me about her,  
the whereabouts of the calico  
the sellers abandoned  
when they moved to Warrensburg.  
According to Arlene, self- 
appointed neighborhood watch,  
the cat in question scratched  
their kids, so Haley and Bryce left it 
behind. According to Darrell,  
“Selena,” so named by his son Isaac,  
his wife Annette, wouldn’t have 
survived the last winter the sellers  
sheltered in my house had Annette not  
invited it in. Our first few months 
Selena haunted the lilac bush, napped  
under the front deck. She rubbed  
up against my leg nights I carried out  
the trash. Appeared on the back  
deck in early morning dark, looking  
for someone I half imagined  
was me. I would open the garage door   
for her but doubt she ever entered.  
Must have been pining for someone else.
                        

It hurts where I hit myself  
on the head. Who would  
want to be a poet, snagged,  
as you said, except when,  
or where, it’s the only viable  
option, so as not to end up  
a suicide. Sometimes I imagine  
myself a preacher because 
I was good at debate in high school 
or because people always  
thought I was deep and wanted  
to have “deep” conversations 
with me, but you have to  
have a sermon to preach and I have  
a brain tumor where the sermon  
would grow. Sometimes I imagine myself  
a scientist because my sight is limited  
to my sight, a cascade of catkins  
and the interstate streaming below  
my balcony rail, but that’s  
not science. That’s just another poem.