PS Cottier

The spaces between dog’s toes
are gardens of smell
erupting fungus tickles the nose
with a soupçon of shit.
She stores a safe of comfort there
and sniffs the spaces
to remind her of the day, the week,
perhaps the fragrant year.
Her brain is a sommelier’s,
sensing the slightest hint of dead bird,
the one at the street corner,
and comparing it with the cockatoo
whose carcass she pranced through the park.
The mixture of these avian scents
must be a kind of heaven, a menu
of brown and must, tucked between
those neat non-books of toe.


The title refers to Sei Shōnagon The Pillow Book, the section called Squalid Things. Poem first published Womens Ink!, November 2024