Bio

Antonia Clark works for a medical software company in Burlington, Vermont, and is co-administrator of an online poetry workshop, The Waters.

Recent poems have appeared in The Chimaera, The Centrifugal Eye, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, Mannequin Envy, The Pedestal Magazine, Stirring, Umbrella, and elsewhere.

She loves French food and wine, and plays French café music on a sparkly purple accordion.

His Dogness

That dog dozing
on the carpet
in squares of light
is the same dog
you curse for giving
chase to squirrels,
bikes and cars.
That sniffs guests
in embarrassing
places, that noses
under your opened
newspaper, hard-
headed, skunky,
dog-fragrant, always
tail-thumping ready
for whatever
you deign to toss
his way. (Toss it
now, now, NOW!)
The same dog
that bounds home
full of the news
of the world
(It's still yapping
CRAZY, man!)
That cannot (please)
cannot cannot SIT!
That growls, howls,
whines, whimpers
at the fenced off,
the flown away,
at the closed door,
that would forgive
a lifetime of no's
to lick your hand.

.