The Rabbit
by Gabrielle Grace Hogan
The dog, she brought one to me, its small skin still wheezing
though torn near in half, and I knew better than to scold her,
when she had only meant to please me, gentle tail undulating
as a Rag would along a seaside wind.
Each room—doors open, doors close, enter, go.
The room where I fell in love with someone,
doesn’t matter who, just that I did, could.
Every room will end up empty, in that way that dogs
are just dogs, not evil for digging up the rabbit’s nest
and flinging its babies across the verdant grass.
What I should’ve done was take the poor reward from her,
and pull its neck sharp to the side, but I couldn’t. I turned away.
Gabrielle Grace Hogan (she/her) received her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin. Her work has been published by TriQuarterly, CutBank, Salt Hill, and others, and has been supported by the James A. Michener Fellowship, the Ragdale Foundation, and the Tin House Workshop. She has published two chapbooks, Soft Obliteration (Ghost City Press 2020), and Love Me With the Fierce Horse Of Your Heart (Ursus Americanus Press 2023). She is a Team Writer for Autostraddle and an Assistant Poetry Editor for Foglifter. Find more information on her website, gabriellegracehogan.com. For now, she lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.