Lauren Henley’s poetry has been widely published in journals and magazines such as Hayden's Ferry Review and is forthcoming in The Tipton Review and others.  She is the co-owner and editor of Apercus Quarterly.  Lauren lives in California's low desert with her husband and her beagle. 

Henley says: "'Black Dog Follows Me' expresses the culpability inherent with being human and how the past trails us whether we recognize it or not."

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Black Dog Follows Me

by Lauren Henley

I did not want you when I first saw you,

which is a response that you know

like your name & the names

you must be called, of which I too

have called you

on all the nights that came before.

You see,

we people are like baskets, and sometimes

like olives,

there is a desire to always be filled

by something. All that to say

we are afraid

& the filling is often a meatless

kind of shadow. You must be tired.

Here is your bed and your bowl.

How you knew I’d be out walking,

you whose volume shifts like pop bottles catching rain,

you with the ribs like scratches

from a hand file,

you hound with eyes too much like a man’s,

& how I thought

I could make it home without you trailing

behind,

all of this serves as reminder,

a string around the finger:

I am not a closed book,

not a pretty thing in a tower,

there is meat in my coat pocket.