BYE SHEEBS
scraggy white tufts and shocks of matted pleats
shanks woolly wisped, plume
lime-streaked
baby-pink patches
strawberry-scratched
usually wound-stippled, unevenly
patched
gainst back-biting pug or
treacherous tom
tease, she’d waul and spat and belly
along,
raking claws even at me, fretting to
fend
her ground, o spitting bold
co-resident
when inturning eyelids were crimped
curt
two haemorrhages that laid her low,
spurt
ing blood in crimson swathes about
her hind
Better put her down, our vet opined
blind
no,
never this moochy mog, my moppet malkin
skittishly wary, low-crouched,
defiant, oft-sulking
her petite frizz face would scowl
over the wall
she’d mount vigil with turned-up
curl of tail
crusted ear tips burnt raw,
wrinkling black,
amputated to cockle shells,
carcinoma cracked
one now cuter, leaving her lop-faced
and dumpy
chipmunk-chapped, so smug-grumpy
three days without a pecksniff of
Iams
no wolfing brittle bones or tid-bits
of lamb
minuscule
stools, pumpkin-orangey trails
Sheebs ebbed
to a coma, her kidneys fail
into a corner
she crawled, her aura stained
on one cheek her drizzled visage
lain
but twice from
wildering deeps she hurled
an eerie,
long-curdling, mewling howl
at last I gathered up the
still-sagged lump
kissed thin,
pale lips, did forehead bumps
half her moosh
squashed flat, blood dried
down chin, she
bequeathed a hollow sigh
Michael
Small
August; Dec31-Jan 3, 2000
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