All My Pretty Ones

  for the Champions

I lied to the neighbors and to myself, yes.

Why?


I lied to my neighbors
and to the self
perhaps because no matter how
many of my pretty ones I
said your dog had killed, it
would never be as many as (roaming
loose among the lies
you also told all year, inside
my heart, and memory, and
future imaginings) your
dog has killed. I guess


a man lets loose his hounds, or he
ties up his hounds loosely. He lives


in a nice house, for a few years, blamelessly. Or


he lives in a white
house, or in my own house, and then—
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