by Christopher Gaumer

We laid him down, forty pounds of beagle. We took shovels; the earth opened easy, like mouths for cheese.

Greg and Kathy stopped by to ask could they help. We were digging, the four of us.

Kathy sang “Amazing Grace,” which I hated, but what can you do?

Greg passed me Frank’s body—solid and strange, only his ears still mobile, velvety smooth, like I imagine the space between dimensions.

Eventually dirt covered the body, covered the blanket, covered the hole, until it was just a plain flat spot of dirt that was, like it or not, our yard.

Chris Gaumer’s creative writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, Souvenir, Iodine Poetry Journal, Mountain Troubadour, and elsewhere. His work is anthologized in Best Microfiction 2019, and he is the winner of the Poetry Society of Vermont’s 2019 poetry contest. Chris is MFA Assistant Director and professor at Randolph College.