Dog Boy

One

Late at night  in Oklahoma, a very small, an extremely small man ran across the road in front of my friend’s car. He does not doubt this is real, though the rest of us do, and it doesn’t bother him. He continues to paint portraits of astonishing trees each day and take long drives through the country at night.  Nothing else can be learned about this mysterious incident.

Two

On Scott Road, in Pittsburgh, which is a steep and winding city, full of good-natured people, just at the point where the road bottoms out beside a gnarled and ancient cemetery, a very small, an extremely small man ran across the road in front of my brother-in-law’s car and scrambled into the tombstones. For the purposes of this story, I will refer to my brother-in-law as Matthew.  Matthew had a friend in the car with him, and both of them saw this creature pass in front of them through the headlights. Matthew is the type to downplay this kind of thing, whether he dwells on it inwardly or not.  Later, another friend of his who lives on Scott Road told Matthew he heard something outside one night and when he peered through the French Doors he saw the same extremely small man leaping over the sandbox. How did he know it was the same one? I asked Matthew, and he shrugged and continued to strum an imaginary guitar, and Matthew’s unconcern is the biggest mystery of them all.

—Matthew Rohrer

The Amaranth

is an imaginary flower that never fades.
The amaranth is blue with black petals,
it’s yellow with red petals,
it’s enormous and grows into the shape
of a girl’s house,
the seeds nestle high in the closet
where she hid a boy.
The boy and his bike flee
the girl’s parents from the tip
of the leaves, green summer light
behind the veins.
The amaranth is an imaginary flower
in the shape of a girl’s house
dispensing gin and tonics
from its thorns, a succulent.
This makes the boy’s bike steer
off-course all summer, following
the girl in her marvelous car,
the drunken bike.

He was a small part of summer,
he was summer’s tongue.

—Matthew Rohrer

Childhood Stories

They learned to turn off the gravity in an auditorium
and we all rose into the air,
the same room where they demonstrated
pow-wows and prestidigitation.

But not everyone believed it.
That was the most important lesson
I learned — that a truck driven by a dog
could roll down a hill at dusk
and roll right off a dock into a lake
and sink, and if no one believes you
then what is the point
of telling them wonderful things?

I walked home from the pow-wow
on an early winter night in amazement:
they let me buy the toy tomahawk!
As soon as I got home I was going
to hit my sister with it, but I didn’t know this.

—Matthew Rohrer