Poetry / Justin Rigamonti 

:: To the Dog Who Wanted to Fetch the Moon ::

	
Whose human said, Pepper, baby, it’s too far,
we can only watch. Who wouldn’t understand
too far if you spelled it out. Who sees a ball
up there and longs to circle it, nose it, take it
in her mouth. Pepper, baby, it’s okay, I know
you won’t give up. Welcome to the melancholy
club. We’re out here nightly, gazing, longing
to lay a hand on her immaculate light. Would it
be cold, would it be hard? We know, and yet
you drop your ears, ignore your human like we
ignore the scientists—they say we’re doomed,
leashed to a small blue stone. It’s true, but look,
there she is, bone white, stunning. The god
of everything beyond us. And so we howl.

From the writer

:: Account ::

My near­ly fin­ished man­u­script starts with a poem about a game my broth­er and I used to play: we’d close our eyes and try to imag­ine we’d nev­er exist­ed. It felt like reach­ing out and touch­ing the cold, black sur­face of the void. And the ques­tion my book asks is what it means to desire any­thing in a life that might’ve nev­er hap­pened. To be a sub­jec­tive con­scious­ness that rose from noth­ing and will return to it and wants things in between: it’s a daz­zling, infu­ri­at­ing, and beau­ti­ful thing to be, right? Many of the poems in the book are son­nets because I love the sim­ple mech­a­nism of the vol­ta as a way of cre­at­ing a brief sense of clar­i­ty, “a momen­tary stay against con­fu­sion.” Which is also how it felt to watch the inter­net video of the dog that inspired this poem—the dog who remind­ed me so much of myself and my poems, lit­tle mam­mals whin­ing sweet­ly for some­thing utter­ly beyond them. Watch­ing the video con­soled me for a moment, soft­ened the cor­ners of my bewil­der­ment, and like a son­net, cleared the air.

Justin Rig­a­mon­ti teach­es Eng­lish at Port­land Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege and serves as the Pro­gram Coor­di­na­tor for PCC’s Car­olyn Moore Writ­ing Res­i­den­cy. He’s also the Poet­ry Coor­di­na­tor for Chat­ter PDX, Portland’s new Sun­day morn­ing cham­ber music + spo­ken word event. Justin’s poems have been recent­ly pub­lished or are forth­com­ing in Ploughshares, Hayden’s Fer­ry Review, Fron­tier Poet­ry, Amer­i­can Poet­ry Review, Rat­tle, Smar­tish Pace, and New Ohio Review.