PIGWEED (an excerpt from North Side Love Riot)

Vicious they snarl and trip like drunken piano keys. The high notes, the sharp notes hold the Spring air…it is almost hot but Summer is long off. Sirens cry near and the pigweed along the back fence needs seeing to. Soon, chemicals to sear and bleach and fade the blemish away. It was another man’s trash, another man’s labour. Oddly enough, I stuck it out and saw it through. Must be getting older.

The dogs are growing louder and ‘cross the intervening fences and neighbouring plots the yelp-whine-grgling mass of noise lets loose clear sound mosaics: a young pup laid open, sternum to scrotum by an older, meaner male. Too stunned to die just yet; a panting, glazing, whining pulse that taps slower and lower with each rotation. The piano is up, frenetic and over-happy. Swingin’ as the hounds three alleys over rip and tear, perhaps for profit of grubby twenties fingered and passed around until the dominant male struts back to his kennel, a cool c-note strapped to his ass.

Sometimes, though, dogs just fight.