Why My Computer and I Can't Keep a Charge

Edgewise along the lamppost: my shadow.

It fuses to light’s proclivity

a kind of diamond-backed French bulldog both

white and black. Gripping the leash, memory

unreels the evening’s analogue, first

of many. I remember the dinner

he made, its duck/cherry roulade, its blood,

what he called juice, smearing the plate

but in reverse, so with my battery

and my dog, I walk through the park, come

to a lake. A flush of ducks lines the shore

with down so another batch can be born—

all this before dinner, when I was small

and my shadow was a link in a dog’s choke,

chalking itself up to the play of light

on metal. I remember when he was born;

I was born then too, but in a different

city and in reverse, so every night

I’m rocked by myself in the dark where arms

meet chest to make a kind of cradle.

The leash and lamppost are so alike. Both

are straight lines leading either up or

away. I find I move around my block,

then back again to the body’s charging dock.