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Published: Tue Jul 1 2003
Diego Isaias Hernández Méndez, Convirtiéndose en characoteles / Sorcerers Changing into Their Animal Forms (detail), 2013, oil on canvas. Arte Maya Tz’utujil Collection.
O Hollywood (1)

ELIA KAZAN

A little day light
bruises through the door
and runs its one nail through
the fur

wild on the pit floor.

A pound of fat and fur,
the blood is dog blood
and it fills up

the room.

The room is a small room
and it fills up

the world.

A fight never ends
just one dog is pulled off the other—

Crushed basket of chin
and cheek bone. A tongue

somewhere.      Half a face.

Matthew Dickman is currently a Michener Fellow at the University of Texas, received the 2000 C. Hamilton Bailey poetry fellowship from Oregon Literary Arts, and has recently been published in _Tin House, Clackamas Literary Review, Poet Lore, _and Rhino.

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