James Fujinami Moore
if I should die eaten by a Pomeranian
I would like the priest to say
that I did not see it coming
because if I did, I would
have done something about
it despite the fact that it's
never a good look to try and
fight a Pomeranian, even if
it started it, even if you see,
somewhere deep those tiny
overplucked eyes the echo
of some older thing, some
glint outside the cave, the
growl of what isn’t exactly a
wolf, dear priest please say
the thing about what wasn’t
a wolf and also the thing
about the feral hog, how if
you leave a domesticated pig
outside for long enough it
becomes a hog, grows tusks
and hair, how that’s
epigenetics, how a feral
hog’s not exactly a boar but
it hardly matters does it
when you’re bleeding out
into the loamy floor trying
to figure out how your
afternoon went so badly,
how you entered the
ecosystem, how your story
about the woods turned into
a tale, a cautionary tale, the
kind of tale you hope isn’t
told by a priest in a non-
denominational side room
while the ushers check their
watches, stifle their laughs,
wonder what happened to
the Pomeranian anyways,
wandering the woods,
growing its fur, finding its
old wild, the priest wrapping
up the story with something
about nature probably, the
wet hungers of nature
probably, how the precise
bright teeth of a Pomeranian
are each the finger of God
probably, each wrapped
around your throat, almost
like a prayer
I would like the priest to say
that I did not see it coming
because if I did, I would
have done something about
it despite the fact that it's
never a good look to try and
fight a Pomeranian, even if
it started it, even if you see,
somewhere deep those tiny
overplucked eyes the echo
of some older thing, some
glint outside the cave, the
growl of what isn’t exactly a
wolf, dear priest please say
the thing about what wasn’t
a wolf and also the thing
about the feral hog, how if
you leave a domesticated pig
outside for long enough it
becomes a hog, grows tusks
and hair, how that’s
epigenetics, how a feral
hog’s not exactly a boar but
it hardly matters does it
when you’re bleeding out
into the loamy floor trying
to figure out how your
afternoon went so badly,
how you entered the
ecosystem, how your story
about the woods turned into
a tale, a cautionary tale, the
kind of tale you hope isn’t
told by a priest in a non-
denominational side room
while the ushers check their
watches, stifle their laughs,
wonder what happened to
the Pomeranian anyways,
wandering the woods,
growing its fur, finding its
old wild, the priest wrapping
up the story with something
about nature probably, the
wet hungers of nature
probably, how the precise
bright teeth of a Pomeranian
are each the finger of God
probably, each wrapped
around your throat, almost
like a prayer
--
James Fujinami Moore's debut collection is Indecent Hours (Four Way Books, 2022), winner of the GLCA New Writers Award in Poetry. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Asimov's Science Fiction, Barrow Street's 4x2, The Brooklyn Rail, Guesthouse, The Margins, the Pacifica Literary Review, and Prelude. He has received fellowships from Poets House, Bread Loaf, and the Frost Place, and received his MFA from Hunter College in 2016. He lives in Los Angeles.
James Fujinami Moore's debut collection is Indecent Hours (Four Way Books, 2022), winner of the GLCA New Writers Award in Poetry. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Asimov's Science Fiction, Barrow Street's 4x2, The Brooklyn Rail, Guesthouse, The Margins, the Pacifica Literary Review, and Prelude. He has received fellowships from Poets House, Bread Loaf, and the Frost Place, and received his MFA from Hunter College in 2016. He lives in Los Angeles.