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The Dog-headed Girl, by Janis Freegard
(after a Lucy Casson sculpture)
The dog-headed girl
goes to the beach for a swim. She splashes about in the
salty water barking her joy. Woof! says the dog-headed
girl. Woof, woof! She dog-paddles out to meet the waves.
If you threw her a stick, she would fetch it for you. When
she emerges from the water, she shakes herself frenetically,
flinging droplets across the sand until she’s half-dry.
The dog-headed girl wears no shoes.
The dog-headed girl has a red dog.
The dog-headed girl plays the ukulele.
The dog-headed girl
goes to the bookshop to find a book she might like to read
(one that’s not too dog-eared). She roams up and down the
shelves trying to sniff out one that she’ll enjoy. Finally she
settles on a novel by Banana Yoshimoto. It does not smell
of bananas.
The dog-headed girl chases seagulls.
The dog-headed girl does not like cats.
The dog-headed girl sometimes gets fleas.
The dog-headed girl
buys a hot-dog and chips from the takeaway bar on the
corner. Her mouth waters when the shopkeeper hands her
the takeaway parcel wrapped in yellow paper. The dog-
headed girl wolfs it all down as fast as she can. She grins a
jowly grin: it’s a good life being a bitch.
This was originally published in JAAM in 2002, and later reprinted in Viola Beadleton’s Compendium. (I’ve made one or two small changes since). Lucy Casson is a UK artist who had work in a show at the Dowse in Lower Hutt in 2002 (“Reclaimed”, about making art out of rubbish). One of her sculptures was of a female figure with the head of a red dog, who was walking a red dog. I still have the poster on my wall.
More Tuesday Poems here.
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