DOGS OF BROOKLYN is Susie DeFord's fresh poetic narrative about her colorful life as a dog walker in Brooklyn accompanied by vivid photographs by Dennis Riley.
“Susie DeFord’s DOGS OF BROOKLYN is a high-energy homage to a neighborhood, a borough, and a city. It offers a lament for the city’s “becoming like the suburban sprawl we all fled here to escape” while also standing as proof of the city’s vitality, its ongoing possibility for poetry. Full of dicey humor and uncommon open-heartedness for human and non-human animals alike, DOGS OF BROOKLYN celebrates the blessed state of being both one and numerous.” –Maggie Nelson
“From the strut of “Prospect Heights Pop” Susie DeFord lets us have it with her “swing dance bopping / big band mind” and that IT is Brooklyn with its “trash confetti streets” where Spring’s pollen turns to summer’s barbeque smoke and dirt. This book is studded with sonnets that thrill with their funk mixed with sophisticated end rhymes. DeFord gives us her streets and people in a roller coaster ride of sense images—dogs, crazies, Laundromat ladies, with a sprinkling of yuppie moms—and seems to be saying we’re all animals in this world, and it’s a glorious and messy street party day and night.” –Barbara Hamby
“Dogs bring out the best in us, and certainly they bring the best poems out of Susie DeFord. And while you'll pick up a lot of dog lore from these poems, the main thing you'll see is how she uses the dog life as a tool to explore her city, her self, and you as well, reader. For to peer into these poems is to look into the face of your favorite pooch and see there a reflection of the person you are but also the one you really want to be, the one who's affectionate, loyal, curious, energetic, someone with a boundless appetite for life—someone very much like a dog, in other words. Here's to Susie and her beautiful poems! And to our four-footed friends everywhere.” –David Kirby
“Susie DeFord’s exhilarating Dogs of Brooklyn brims with the energy of the city (and animals) she loves. The writing is vigorous, the perceptions acute, and the feelings infectious. A terrific debut.” –John Koethe
“Our canine betters, our friends since pre-history, have rarely had the justice done to them that Susie DeFord does in her wonderful poetic investigations into the life of Brooklyn's dogs, into their habits, their idiosyncrasies, and their secret longings.” –Vijay Seshadri
EXCERPTS
Walking home from the Q train, dogs and coffee
shops split street strut, brownstone buildings
and big trees bud, shooting up from the sidewalk,
dreadlocked drug dealers stalk, hanging on changing
corners---the neighborhood watch while Maclaren
Mafia mommies’ doublewide strollers scream on by.
Sidewalk block, I weave and wave through the window
at big, soft Audrey working in the new chi-chi bakery.
Better than the lemon cookies, she always says hello
and remembers my coffee. Soul tracks for sale outside
the Key Food serenade as macho men swallow me
with their scary smiles. The tough Brooklyn guys
at Acme Pet Shop on Vanderbilt Avenue with their old
orange cat Knuckles chuckle at their Akita pup Lefty
as he jumps up to box me. Head down Prospect past
Harry and three-legged Fred lounging, hogging up
the sidewalk looking for strokes and extra treats
to make up for his hop-walk like a bouncing spring.
Hit Underhill and follow the Jah Love guy with his
giant boombox blasting reggae, doing his slow strange
walking meditation, Jesus Loves You sign strapped
to his back, and I think he must have, to have given
me this neighborhood so suited to the swing dance
bopping in my big band mind. Click the vestibule keys,
check the mail, doors squeal and slam like a drumbeat.
I dance up the dirty, dark stairs to the tiny shoebox
apartment where Itty Pity, hearing me wrestle the locks,
starts howling her blues. My mama been gone, left me
all alone. Said my mama been gone, left me all alone.
She run around with them dogs, to keep the lights on.
photo of Francis by Dennis Riley
St. Francis of 42nd Street
Troubador turned beggar, a dapper king growling from your jeweled
throne as I enter your home. You turn your whiskered nose up
until I offer mice bites of cheese from the icebox.
You take them carefully from my fingertips with your tiny teeth,
then to show your love of all creatures great and small, you hump
your giraffe. Our pilgrimage begins, we step out amidst
the Poor Clares, you sniff gingerly. Slip and click, claws scrape
hallway linoleum as you scuttle from doormat to doormat. Sit
your silent protest of passive resistance at top of stairs--
it worked for Ghandi and Martin Luther King but you’re just ten
tough pounds of hair and teeth, a bat without wings, this city’s
great rat terrier, terrorist king. Jacob’s not the only one
who’s wrestling bigger things. I coax you downward , you resist
then relent, sensing my stubbornness more than your own.
On the streets you’re a bowling ball on a string, a yo-yo
getting caught on the scents of trees and your need to mark
everything, a urinary graffiti artist bombing the hell out
of Brooklyn, needing to be smelled and seen,
and then comes a Shepard, a flock of other dogs, and you snap
from your cool collar upturned James Dean to the 42nd street
savage yelling and foaming. You may need to rethink
your recruitment strategy. I lift you up in your harness--suspended
you squirm a spider web worn and traveling. A flight of steps,
a plight of depths, stop dead in your tracks afraid of falling
upwards. It’s let go or be dragged, you’re rising, surprising yourself
with your own abilities, if only walking through fear was as easy
as being pulled up by someone who keeps believing.
Invisible Trampolines
Indiana is unimpressed with Amelia’s antics,
bounding around on invisible trampolines,
out of nowhere bursts of energy and whim,
electricity, whenever the moment lighting
strikes her. She’s a tiger-striped whirlwind,
a bouncing boxer ready for a fake fight,
she delights at snow banks and sand alike,
children screeching after school or anyone
who “Awwws” her goofy grin. She’ll show
them, nub tail wagging a frenetic hummingbird
wiggle, she dances figure eights along cement
cracks and splits. Her comrade Indiana
can’t be bothered with this. He’s serious,
on a mission looking out for imaginary
assassins, tail down shiver cold, too tough
for the sweater, he growls low when I try
to put it on him. Shark eyes black blink
surveying the scene, a reincarnated army
sergeant running drills along the sidewalk
until Amelia bangs her body into him,
momentarily he lets go and does a little hop
along with her remembering there’s more
to life than boxing, there’s the moment
and all the dancing spins it can dream.
Links to Poems in other places:
Poems in Shampoo, Dog Fancy, and the anthology Dogs Singing.
"Searching for Whitman's Beard" published in Mipoesias August 2010.
Poem published on Work Zine 2010
5 poems published in Poets and Artists December 2009
"Powerboat Pit Bull" poem and photo published at Clattery MacHinrey.
