House Call 1936 by Dani Sandal

Beneath naked bulb hung from twisted cord, a black-bagged surgeon stoops to stroke porch dog dozing on bloodied bone. Inside his leather womb, steel instruments, useless as dried teats of this fat-bellied bitch, still smell of vinegar. His sway-back nag waits, an empty cradle, stayed atop prairie plane. Payment of lamb shank, tucked tight in coat sleeve; its sacrificed skull buried deep behind slaughter house. He has soaked the woman’s sorrow with ether-drenched rags now burning in fires of cedar bough as smoke slinks from stone flue like drunken angels toward heaven’s floor. Barren moon hovers, blue as stillbirth, this quiet night.

(first appeared in Puerto Del Sol Winter 2013: http://www.puertodelsol.org/current.html)