You’ve arrived, dog, at the Museum of Fine Arts,

packed in a foam-padded wooden crate, and now,

gingerly broken out, placed at the show’s main gate

tight-lipped. Greeter, first contact, shouldn’t visitors

hear that during your stint as number one dog

at the pharaoh’s side—not when you were mummified,

but when you were both alive—you lost your teeth?

Something in the water. You couldn’t even snatch

and shake a drowned Nile rat. Poor thing. But given

your powerful ties, you couldn’t show and shake

like that. So first, rather than just put you down,

the pharaoh had you fixed—like himselves—ceremoniously

brought back to strut around, jaws crammed with gold

fangs, molars, and incisors. You’d look forever

enforcing, he thought. But you couldn’t. Jaws weighted

as such, your head dragged ashamed. What next?

Out of the ant lines of slaves stepped one, who

claimed that any burdened animal still loved play.

Like a museum, he tried to save you and give

others breaks. He proposed that two slaves knock off

hourly, swing down from the pyramids to entertain

you, dog, keep you circling, perky. The proposal

passed—no presumed effect on production—but ooo

the weight of those teeth. You ran out of gas by noon,

so the two slaves on duty desperately rolled you

on your back and scratched your belly, and you did

what dogs do, sympathetically kicked as if

you were doing the work and smiled. The inclined slaves

loved the unintended humor, roared. The pharaoh

couldn’t have that, immediately fixed you for good,

never moving, no sound, no smiling. Best for warding

off. Sort of a welcome: stay, stay where you are.

|||

Scott Withiam’s first book is Arson & Prophets. His poems are recently out in Agni, Antioch Review, Ascent, Boston Review, Chattahoochee Review, and Cimarron Review. Poems are forthcoming in Barrow Street and Beloit Poetry Journal. He works for a non-profit in the Boston area.

This poem was originally published in TLR The Tides. Withiam’s work can also be read in TLR The Worst Team Money Can Buy.