FALL/WINTER 2026
Three Poems
Dan Chiasson
By Dog’s Decree
By dog’s decree this day
Be consummate
To love. No tanker ruptured
In a foreign strait. The armies
That flatten cities
Powerless shall be
And soon shall see
Their own hearts shattered;
But not today,
Today we’ll read poetry
And ponder
With the dog that word,
That common word made strange
By context, consummate,
By its author’s, the dog’s, decree.
A Soothsayer Flea
I don’t want this to be
A part of your official life
I want this to be
The core of your privacy
Sayeth the flea to me.
But is privacy real
I asked the flea
Is it a real place
With real creemees
Real waterfalls
Do people laugh there
As they do by waterfalls?
Is there a picnic stone
Still cool at noon, hot
To the touch when the sun hits?
The flea turned enigmatic
Soothsayer mode
Magic 8-Ball moment
Depends, said the flea to me
Depends where reality be
Is it a thing of the body?
And where is the body,
Anyway? Then for his fee
He bit my mortal flesh.
Hermit Crabs
It was hard to know how
To show them much affection.
They were, in this way, like nuns;
Also like nuns, they seemed
To lack a sex life.
For fun, they just fought.
Petting them was poking them.
I needed them to know
I needed them but how?
We snacked on apple slices
Together, daydreamers
Fate brought together, or
my grandfather bought
to mentor me
In responsibility.
But I let the heat lamp die
In frigid Burlington,
in January; weeks passed before I
Bothered to buy a new bulb.
Shivering in their tank
Their mostly comical squabbles
Now turned homicidal, savage.
One day, one of their shells
was empty, a beautiful shell,
a paper fig the petstore
Sold for three dollars more.
The living crab smiled, satisfied
Then died the following day.
I cried tears I
had not cried
When my friend’s brother
Died. He was killed
In the road, crossing for a sundae.
Trivial drives can cost
our lives. It’s fine to want
a new shell, pink like the color
Of your mind, or a sundae
After baseball, but not
when your friend is a cannibal.