Tania Runyan

Bio: Tania Runyan is the author of the poetry collections What Will Soon Take Place, Second Sky, A Thousand Vessels, Simple Weight, and Delicious Air. Her guides How to Read a Poem, How to Write a Poem, and How to Write a Form Poem are used in classrooms across the country. Her poems have appeared in many publications, including Poetry, Image, Indiana Review, Atlanta Review, and The Christian Century. Tania was awarded an NEA Literature Fellowship in 2011.

Give the Goose Her Space

When the air seethesand the tongue shivers like a pink snakebetween her beakand the webbed toes braceto slap across the concrete trailto the sorry spacefrom which you snap your Instagram pics,you have already come too close. Boundaries are not for laughs. We frame a quivering scaffold around those parts of uswe’re nervous to hatch.When her necknoodles toward the sky,step aside. Better yet, the moment a wing tipquivers, pivot and headthe other way. At leastyou have a choiceto make. At leastyou have another place to go.

Support Dog Villanelle

Is that the Andromeda galaxy or lights in the fogfrom thirty thousand feet above the ground?It doesn’t matter to the airborne dog
wriggling in fleece like a chihuahua pollywogtrapped in the present as I boundtoward the Andromeda galaxy, lights in the fog
of my dreams that memory briefly logsbefore I suddenly wake to the soundof matters pertaining to an airborne dog.
She growls and chirps as the owner, agog,sips her tiny bourbon and glances aroundan Andromeda galaxy of glares lit in the fog
that is her anxious brain seeping and cloggedwith all her fiery disasters unfoundedthat matter not to an airborne dog
who snuffles and snorts like a barnyard hogtoo canine to worry about turbulent clouds,the Andromeda galaxy, or lights in a fog.None of that matters to an airborne dog.

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