Our Stray Dogs

By Fahima Sahabdeen - 

Fahima Sahabdeen

Our Stray Dogs

I worry about our stray dogs,

not because they must live off their wits

and be chased from kades with brooms

and compete with beggars and crows for food,

but because they live on the edge of sunned roads,

stretched out if you please, for afternoon siestas

or their equivalent of hot stone therapy,

inches from roaring traffic.

They sprawl at officers’ feet at army checkpoints,

the dogs under arrest as muzzles meet,

and I worry about chance gunfire,

as in Russian roulette

but nothing happens.

They seem to be laughing at fate

with their wide grinning faces,

panting against the heat.

But our first highways

have opened as part of our post-war vision,

a five-hour journey reduced to one.

Our dogs carry on with their spas and siestas

and Vicki my stylist at Cutting Station

counted seventeen dead dogs,

each flattened like cardboard,

Perhaps it’s a good thing.

Once all our stray dogs are killed,

I need not worry any more.