Sharp Teeth
Toby Barlow
Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.
ROBERT FROST
Contents
Epigraph
Book One
Book Two
Book Three
Book Four
Book Five
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
book one
There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.
WALTER BENJAMIN
His hair was perfect.
WARREN ZEVON
I
Let’s sing about the man there
at the breakfast table
brown skin, thin features, white T,
his olive hand making endless circles
in the classifieds
“wanted” “wanted” “wanted”
small jobs little money
but you have to start somewhere.
Here.
LA
East LA
a quarter mile from where they pick up the mariachis
on warm summer nights
two miles from La Serenata de Garibaldi’s
where the panther black cars pause on their haunches
while their blonde women eat inside
wiping the blood red
mole from their quiet lips
“wanted” “wanted” “wanted”
he circles the paper
then reaches for the phone
breathes deep, begins.
“nope, sorry”
“job was taken already, good luck”
“you got experience?”
“leave a message”
“forgettaboutit”
“you sound Mexican, ola, you Mexican?”
“call back Monday”
“mmmn, I don’t know nothing about that”
“no”
“no”
“no”
Then his barbed hook catches. A thin gold vein
is struck. Buds of hope crack through the dry white earth:
“oh sure, come on by, what’s your name?”
Dogcatcher.
His father was not a man but a sleepy bull
with sledgehammer hands and a soft heart.
He once brought a dog home from the pound
for Anthony.
Sipping coffee by the phone now
that little yapping note of hope still rings in his ears.
Anthony smiles, remembering the way
the puppy sat between his father’s strong legs
as they stood looking down like gods
at the cowering little creature.
They laughed. The pup relaxed,
wagged its fat tail.
His father was kind to the dog, to the kids, to his wife
until a week later when he went through the windshield
on Sepulveda. Hit so hard
it didn’t matter where he landed.
And after that nothing was kind
it was every man for himself
and there were no men
just a widow, some kids
and a dog who went back to the pound,
taking his chances with no chance at all.
C’est la guerre.
Pondering his path,
Anthony wonders now,
if maybe that dog
wasn’t just some real bad luck.
“Packs of thirty or forty at a time
wander loose
like gauchos in their own damn ghost town.
They come from the hills, up from the arroyos.
We don’t know how many, estimates vary,
but each time they come in
a few house dogs go back with them.
Anytime you got toy poodles breeding with coyotes
it’s gonna get interesting.”
Calley is so white, he’s red
with blanched features pickled and burned.
He shows Anthony how to wrangle, how to pull hoops, slip a wire.
They sit at the firing range. “You’ll be shooting tranqs,
but might as well practice with live rounds.” Calley shows
bite marks on his hands, legs and arms.
His breath bites too: coffee, cigarettes, and just plain old rancid.
“I’ll ride partner with you for a bit, but with all the cutbacks
they’re making us all ride solo now.”
“What happens if I hit a pack?”
“Hit a pack, hit the radio.” Calley pauses, draws on a smoke
the red in his eyes almost matches the
blood vessels spidering across his face
It’s a foggy, milky, bloodshot stare,
but it still holds a mean light.
He rasps, “You like dogs?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Mmmn,” he nods. “You won’t.”
The “animal control” logo makes Anthony wonder.
Animals have no control, they run, they fuck, they eat,
they kill to fuck, they kill to eat
and they sleep in the noonday sun.
Anthony’s not afraid of the dogs,
he’s not afraid of the work,
he just hates the other guys.
He sits apart, trying to stay clean.
Perhaps over time he will become like them
with their permanent stains and bitter dispositions.
But Christ almighty, he thinks,
I hope not.
II
There’s blood everywhere,
but it’s the creatures at the edge,
licking the corner of the ruby pool,
that hold your curiosity.
So get this straight
it’s not the full moon.
That’s as ancient and ignorant as any myth.
The blood just quickens with a thought
a discipline develops
so that one can self-ignite
reshaping form, becoming something rather more canine
still conscious, a little hungrier.
It’s a raw muscular power,
a rich sexual energy
and the food tastes a whole lot better.
Imagine,
sleeping with the pack
the safety, the loyalty,
the protection.
Imagine
the elemental comfort.
Bone, love, meat, gristle, heat, anger, exhaustion, drive, hunger, blood, fat, marrow.
Fifteen men lying in one house.
Listen to the night as
they softly growl
someone chases something in his dreams
desperate for satisfaction
then silent.
There’s one woman here.
There’s one leader here.
The pack does what he says,
she comes and goes
as she pleases.
Lark was challenged
that night there was no moon.
The pack had seen and felt it
coming and building.
Lark was a man when it started,
wolf when it ended.
Con tried to cut him with a knife
coming in through the front door
but with perfect liquid grace,
Lark slipped past the weapon’s edge
grabbed Con’s hand and bent it back.
The blade flew through the Ruscha.
Teeth gleamed bare and sharp
muscles tore through jackets
Ted Baker shirts were shredded
blood striped the walls
sweat soaked through.
A Tag Heuer watch flew off
what was once a wrist.
Con was a man when it started,
he wasn’t much by the time it was done.
Some of us have problems.
They still talk about Bone and what the grease does to him.
He can’t go into fried chicken places
the smell, the scent, turns his blood right away.
They say he took out a Popeye’s once.
It made the news, unsolved.
It took him an hour.
He walked in, just to pick up a bucket.
The smell hit, the change happened,
and the whole place had to go.
Chicken, customers, biscuits, and gravy.
Lark says control is everything.
There’s no percentage in hating
your nature, it’s just in the blood.
That was about three years ago,
there was some buzz,
press says gangs,
people wail on television
then, not surprisingly
life just keeps moving on.
Between money, work,
and the day to day
Lark never loses track of
the long range.
The pack never questions
if they did, they sense
there would be no answers.
So they follow his lead
and they stay quiet,
they drive their 7 Series the speed limit
and Bone gets his chicken from the drive-through.
They do their best to stay clean.
They still talk about the last one who tried something.
Baron, down at a party in Irvine,
thought a couple of lines might be fun.
Press says gangs,
people wail on television
but it was just Baron.
There are some problems
but, mostly, life just goes on.
Lark has a woman.
He says every pack must have one.
The pack has needs
but Lark says its not about that.
He says control is the path.
As she lies there among them,
her curves lines of delicate torture,
the tension can snap so tight,
that each one of the pack
feels like a piano wire pulled taut.
Lark says the desire pulls the pack together
calls it the Ukan path.
The pack follows it because here
inside the circle
they taste the fresh, wet meat of success
while outside the circle
lies nothing but coyote darkness.
Blood, fat, marrow, grease, sinew, muscle, guts, hide, fur, sleep.
They may twitch in their dreams when they sleep
but they sleep deep.
III
She rides alone,
a route that brings her
down by the beach
which takes her back,
her memory flickering
as it does
to what had been.
She’s supposed to be going straight to the bar,
to see if he’s there.
Lark sent her, it’s a simple plan,
a slow-working plan, to what end, who knows,
Lark protects her from the dogs, keeps her safe.
He says it’s a three-week job, easy.
She trusts him.
But she still has time to swing past the beach.
Back then, back before,
she hated the punks, goth shit was geek drama
she was clean then
she loved strong boys
she felt pure with the athletes
and she wanted nothing but another green day
with no need for anything deeper or more profound than the phrase
junior college.
There on the sandy beaches and
the lush green sod of the quad she had only three loves:
Chad, so kind, a surfer, easy smile and a pirate’s tooth
his hands roamed her body, then his body up and roamed.
Easy heartbreak, must not have been so deep.
Enter Mike, sweet Mike, his body arched
over volleyballs nets, he was tall, tall, tall,
but when he stopped coming by,
and she felt that heartache
cut deeper into her ribs,
she could still walk it off,
she knew something better was coming.
Then Pete. Oh, Pete,
basketball, lacrosse, blue eyes that seemed swimmable.
She smiled so brightly at him, her teeth practically chimed.
He could kiss her anywhere, touch her anywhere,
anything for Pete, everything ached and opened for him.
When he touched her thigh,
she was anchored to the world.
She drew pictures of him while he slept,
she hummed along when he sang.
Nice.
But then something
was sprung, she doesn’t remember
how the dark sparked but
one idle daiquiri day
she slipped out some small thoughtless words,
stupid jealousy, nothing really, but
the day paused and
everything vibrated wrong.
And then Pete answered back
with something much worse.
The moment seemed
slow but Pete
had her flying
arcing across the room
her head knocking hard against a wall
just like that.
Pete was looking down at her
and she was so weak and small
it didn’t take much
to throw her across the room again
and then again.
only
her sense of tomorrow
all smashed and jumbled
like a pool of paint lying on the floor
after all the bright colors bleed together
into a simple
shit brown.
That was long, long ago right?
only yesterday, right?
She sleeps now with Lark
surrounded by a dozen or so men
who could do terrible things
to anyone who ever tried to touch her
but she doesn’t need the men
she could do plenty of damage
all by herself.
She has the blood for it.
Driving forward, looking back,
she finds there is only the loosest bond
between time and pain
some things don’t pass,
the injuries don’t heal
they merely find a place in our guts
and in our bones
where they fitfully rest,
tossing and turning between our knuckles and ribs
waiting to wake
as the shadows grow long.
Pete lives with a wife
down near the beach.
Lark says he can’t be touched. Not yet.
She listens, but she knows
what a girl like her could do
to a fellow like Pete now.
IV
The only reason to get up is the dogs
Anthony feels cold to the job itself.
The men are all pricks
they smell like cleanser
they want him to be one of the gang
Calley, Mason, Malone.
Watching them
as they beat the dogs down
Anthony stands at the edge, smoking, thinking
that hatred and love emanate equal distances
inside and outside the flesh,
which is why kind folk
are said to have good hearts
while bastards like these
ju
st smell bad.
Some carne asada tacos,
six bucks he can’t spare
split three ways in a kennel
on three dogs who seem to know
they’re about to be put under.
None of them warm to Anthony’s small gesture
they just wolf it all down.
Anthony pets the brindled one
who won’t look up. Anthony glances over
hearing a yelp as
Calley kicks a dog.
“Life’s a bitch, and then you die,” says Calley.
I hate this fucking job, thinks Anthony.
Anthony sips his beer at the bar,
wishing the subject would change.
But his new occupation is a social trip wire
because everyone and without exception everyone
has a dog story to tell.
Most seem to focus on the cruel and sudden demise:
the bus, the pickup truck, the drunk teenage driver,
the electric fence, the unfortunate incident on the tracks,
the rat poison, the sudden debilitating illness, the heart attack,
the slow flatulent decline.
The bartender tonight is saying something
about a big Afghan something dog,
one she had back in the seventies,
“before the dog food they sold was any good,” she says.
Boy, thinks Anthony, how does she know that?
But in all these tales the dog is the innocent shooting star
we all wish upon
until it burns up, aging fast and disappearing
behind our jagged horizons.
Each dog marks a section of our lives, and
in the end, we feed them to the dark,
burying them there while we carry on.
Which somehow reminds Anthony that maybe
it would’ve been nice
if that car had hit the dog
instead of his dad.
Nother round. Nother round. Nother round.
Or, hey, it’s tricks,
“why he could run with an egg in his mouth, play Chopin,
root for vermin and felons, dance a hula, predict the weather,
smell a liar, sort the mail, lead the blind, cry real tears.”
But nobody seems to recall
the sublime form of a dog as she lies
curled up like a comma
in the cool forgiving summer shade
there beneath the bed.