“You better get up,” my brother warns,
“You’re on his level now.”
Ringo paws, sneezes, wedges his head under me.
His doleful eyes entreat--
centuries of artificial selection
making him irresistible.
Big-eyed fur baby to coddle
and dress in Christmas sweaters.
My brother has fallen sway,
latest convert to Ringo’s cult of personality.
He takes him on long walks,
lets him ride shotgun,
carries him over thickets of thorns.
But here I am, scratching behind his ears,
smoothing the velvety fur on his head,
enthralled by those beseeching brown eyes.
Americans spend enough on their pets’ birthdays,
I once read,
to end world hunger.
Rosalie Hendon is an environmental planner living in Columbus, Ohio. She started a virtual poetry group in 2020 during quarantine that has collectively written over 200 poems. Her work is published in Change Seven, Planisphere Q, Call Me [Brackets], Entropy, Pollux, Superpresent, Cactifur, and Fleas on the Dog.
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