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Jacket 19 — October 2002   |   # 19  Contents   |   Homepage   |  Catalog   |
This issue of Jacket is a collaboration with Verse magazine



Edward Bartók-Baratta

The Girl, the Dog, and the Book


A girl is riding on the back of a dog.
In his mouth, the dog is carrying a book,
on the first page of which, a girl is riding

on the back of a dog. As the story goes,
it’s the dog who chose the girl, and she’s held on
ever since. Her small hands tighten with handfuls

of short hair. The world, a cool place, blurred forms,
colors that fly by as they ride, and the girl
has made a home for the wind in her hair. She

wears no clothes, and the dog, huge dark energy
beneath her, his panting like the pumping
of her heart. The dog, for a moment, larger

than a mountain, the girl, hugging a hair, lost
in the woods on his back. She builds a house, starts
her fire, brings the dog back down to size. She sleeps

in a cavity, in the corner of his mouth, swimming
in and out, from the white page to the yellow stones
of his teeth. White foam rises, warm waves breaking

all around her. She spins herself a great nest,
cocoon woven from her long hair. And inside,
a girl is riding on the back of a dog.

In his mouth, the dog is carrying a book,
over the first pages, the girl’s hands rapidly moving.






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