Ago

by A. Molotkov

Do you remember
that dog? How

carelessly it leaped
into its own shortening

future, each moment bright
like a winter star. How

it chased the ball, its brown
tail twitching away seconds

of your life. How it lay
its head on your lap, and later,

when it couldn’t make it
upstairs, on the cold beige

of the kitchen floor. How
carelessly it leapt out

of itself.

A. Molotkov’s poetry collections are The Catalog of Broken Things, Application of Shadows, Synonyms for Silence and Future Symptoms (forthcoming from The World Works). His memoir A Broken Russia Inside Me about growing up in the USSR and making a new life in America is due out in 2022 from Propertius. Molotkov’s collection of ten short stories, Interventions in Blood, is part of Hawaiʻi Review Issue 91. His prose is represented by Laura Strachan at Strachan Lit; he co-edits The Inflectionist Review. Please visit him at AMolotkov.com