An Excerpt from The Complete Catalog of Dogs

The basset with its dragging ears and eyes like worn wheel bearings;

The Doberman with its prosecutor’s tautness and preference for
             expensive whores;

The beagle’s stooge tail;

The toy poodle’s sloppy libido and two-legged embrace;

The mastiff whose tail whacks the swaddled baby Jesus from its crèche;

The wiener dog, more properly known as the dachshund;

And its countryman the German shepherd—black nose like a
             passport stamp;

And many more, i.e., the ink-spotted Dalmatian; the barrel-necklaced
             Saint Bernard;

The saddle-worn bulldog;

The frantic, dust-mop setters;

The eager, expectant, never-loved-enough, water-loving black-golden-
             chocolate labs—

  

all of them trainable, more or less;

protective, curious of scents, unashamed to squat or lift a leg;

nosing park benches, bike racks, street signs;

tracking squirrels and chipmunks;

wanting to please;

interested in the common stick or tennis ball;

diggers of holes;

shoe chewers, sock swallowers, book gnawers, food gobblers;

haters of sirens;

noble, conscionable, unconscionable;

shit eaters, butt sniffers, crouch probers, ass and ball lickers, tail
                          chasers;

farters, deep dreamers, barkers, howlers, whiners, criers, piddlers,
                          shitters

  

—and even this one, the perfumed Pekinese that can’t escape its
             questioning tail;

the shepherd’s crook or crozier hanging over her like a bell above a
             bakery door;

so many years she slept in an aunt’s warped-open, dresser drawer,
             she’s her smell;

and when she breathes the tissue sheets she lay on make their papery,
             emphysemic wheeze;

and her bug-eyes, O, don’t say it, glaucous—black as a seer’s.