Barks
by Chris Chapman
There’s a brief moment when I exchange barks with a distant canine, leaning up the wall allowing these chest tickles to escape they return as a rougher and more pronounced woof. I wonder if in his doggy dialect he’s saying ‘that’s some nasty cough you’ve got buddy.’
I despise the art of coughing; it’s nothing more than a bronchial muscle memory of vomiting. An uncle of mine used to refer to them as ‘chest tickles’; he always used to say, ‘have you swallowed a feather there son?’ I would undoubtedly reply in the negative, for those of you that are wondering I assure you I have never swallowed a feather.
After this brief conversation with the mutt I stumbled further towards my goal. A top heavy equilibrium helped me on my way. I felt like a man trying to balance a broomstick on the palm of his hand. There was always this odd sort of quasi-flirting going on between my head and the Earth, they forever threatened to meet but waved the idea away once the distance between the two grew too little.
I had this relationship once, it stemmed from a chance meeting in a public house. I had been impressed with her ability to blur into an amorphous glut of grey and how she could talk with reverb; she had enjoyed my loose tongue and looser wallet. We exchanged number and enjoyed a fresh and mysterious banding of suggestive comments via text for a few weeks. All went swimmingly until we arranged to meet when sober. At this point we realised we repulsed each other both mentally and physically.
‘You’d fallen for my written word’ she told me, ‘what do you expect’ I replied. ‘You’re written word doesn’t want me to go shopping with it or watch trashy American television.’ We scuttled off back to separate worlds, knowing our lives fit like a hoof in a glove. That was until she got drunk again and the cycle repeated, probably still would do but for the fact she turned lesbian, I think she contracted that from an all girls school she taught at as a trainee teacher. Anyway that was how the Earth and my head worked.
Although I can’t help but think it could be the lure of the hidden ore, magnetic attraction from the Earth’s belly metal. You see when I was six I forced a magnet up my nostril in a vain attempt to retrieve a penny I had swallowed. I am now fully aware that pennies are made of copper and hence not magnetic. Or is it brass?
I bet that dog knows, I decide to ask it. Barking out a few gruff howls that I feel represent the question best I await a reply and it doesn’t take long, dogs aren’t as stupid as you believe, they can talk but choose not to, now that I deem intelligent.
He didn’t answer my question though but he did reply, this is what he said.
“Have you swallowed a feather?”