levelheaded: When we were dogs

A couple of forward slashes break Silvia Bonilla’s main image of three words into a succinct summary of all that is said. “[W]e/were/dogs” is first saying there used to be a “we,” which the poem does not wish to erase but rather recall and relive. “[W]ere” is an admittance, quite factual yet soon to become reflective and emotional. “[D]ogs” is an afterthought, a realization, which serves as a jumpstart moment to explore what once was passionate (white sheets, lingerie, allusion to the body as territory) and now feels animalistic, unpleasantly physical. These three words and two slashes exemplify the workings of this poem: syntax and style subtly support the content, carrying an elusive complexity.

When the poem reaches its crucial moment in terms of plot, Bonilla once again turns to style and punctuation: “I am in love with someone else” tells the story of “were” without much description, and does so using italics and a lack of periods before or after. Given italics aren’t used anywhere else in the poem, this sentence stands out for a short moment before the typeface turns back to normal, and the voice goes back to its even nature, perhaps too even, as if expressing disbelief or denial.

There’s a tension in the poem, stemming from its inability to give in to its own conclusion. It isn’t titled “we were dogs” but “When we were dogs,” because it is a reminiscence that, maybe against its will, contains a lot of the good while presenting the bad. Lines like “how we found each other / on a road of leaning trees” could have been taken from a much happier poem. So could “a moon outside made us / back up our bodies.” The speaker can’t fully let go, which is why the poem exists. And yet lurking all around are locusts and bones.

For the third time a simple visual captures our attention, but there’s something more to it than immediately meets the eye: “love me…love me…love me” confesses a tender, perhaps pathetic moment. But notice the ellipses don’t repeat for the third time. The sentence is somehow symmetric (like the picture on the night stand?) and does not spill over as it would have if it ended with a third ellipsis. It is somewhat less dramatic. The poem continues again without breaking (period) and turns to licking, another sexual moment turned dark by its physicality, echoing the dogs presented earlier. We are left with “health” that implies wound. But here too the final line is misleading in its simplicity:

Instead of “as if to lick me to health” the poem ends with a line break and repetition: “[…] lick me / lick me to health.” Is that an involuntary wish? A passionate urge? These dogs are ambiguous. They’re symmetric but broken. They “were.” But they also are, from the title to the final line.

– The Editors