Ashley Mae Hoiland
Birthday
At the park, I met a dog, Hank, as tall as my chest.
His tender skin–cloud skin–stretched across his ribs
carried a deep cut trying to heal.
His fur, short and bristled, raised around it in a protective gesture.
Hank’s owner (we always know the dog’s names before their humans),
told me Hank had run off the trail in the mountains above our city and attacked a deer.
The dog, kicked and sliced by the brute force of hooves.
The owner said he didn’t know how to stop it, even though he screamed ‘Hank’ over and over
through the brush on the rocky uphill hoping his voice would somehow untangle the situation.
The deer’s blood already seeped into the dirt, its body still, by the time he made it to them.
My own dog, a lithe creature, a shadow, with an intent only to please, once cornered a fawn.
The hair on her neck raised into a black raincloud as she barked and barked.
She couldn’t hear me frantically calling her name as slender flesh of the fawn slammed against
the playground fence again and again trying to escape.
In desperation, I walked away with my dog’s ball, and only then she followed me home,
both our heads hung and silent.
At the park tonight,
both the owner and I say goodbye as the sun sets.
We pet our good dogs, instinctual machines of terror,
on their soft heads.
At night, I sleep better when my dog lays
her weight against my body. Both of us dreaming,
sure of what we could be, before waking to the reality of what we are.
Still Life
Every six months I go to the oncology ward and sit in a recliner while an IV fills my bloodstream With an expensive medication that kills my T-cells.
Before the Benadryl kicks in, I make an effort to look around the room. All of us there with our small bags of chex mix, goldfish, Famous Amos cookies. I am a hard poke, they try again and again to get the needle to the vein. When I look up, I see an art teacher I had in college. He is smaller now than he was then. He does not recognize me, looks past me in my navy blue recliner. I’ve heard he is losing his memory.
He painted still lifes. The objects, an array of items living within the confines of a single canvas, speaking to one another across the textured paint. He is 88 years old now. The Benadryl takes effect and the last I see of him, his feet are up in the recliner, Birkenstocks with socks. White turtleneck on this August day. He is reading a thick book. His white hair waving across his small head. His paintings were meticulously rendered. He also painted Bible scenes–cast out women reaching for a hand, a whole host of miracles done by healers. Before I am fully asleep, I see him highlighting something in the pages.
I dream a drug-induced sleep. I am at the beach with my friend who died three years ago. We are scrambling on the rocks above the clear blue water. She is skinny because of the chemo, but so strong. I climb the rocks behind her, watching her place each foot on the gray stone, worried she will slip, but she doesn’t. In the dream, it’s clear that her time is limited, that she won’t live forever, or even much longer, but for now, we dive into the warm, blue ocean.
I wake to the sound of drowning, a gurgling that is deep throated. A man across the way dabs his throat with a kleenex. He is not old, in a plaid button up, the top buttons undone so he can breathe through the tube in his neck. Another woman pulls a crocheted blanket close around her shoulders. Lots of people in this room do not have hair. I am part of this scene twice a year and feel guilty that somehow, my disease isn’t worse, that the clear liquid in the bag above me ensures this.
The painter is gone now, I did not hear him leave. This room, a still life. A bible scene. A brief moment at the end of things and also, at the beginning.
Ashley Mae Hoiland is the author of One Hundred Birds Taught Me To Fly, published by the Maxwell Institute, and A New Constellation, published by BCC Press. She is a finalist for both books in the AML Awards, a finalist in the category of “Spirituality” in the National Foreword Reviews, and nominated for a Small Press Pushcart Prize. She holds a BFA in painting and an MFA in poetry from Brigham Young University. She served an LDS mission in Uruguay and currently resides in Utah with her husband, three children and a multitude of animals. She teaches online writing classes, paints, and is finishing a collection of poetry. You can find more of her work at https://ashmae.com/