SUN DOGS Anthony Labriola These poems fly from Earth to Jupiter and back, but one can feel the sweat on the skin for the whole trip. Lenses, including those of our eyes, let the sky-watcher chart the trip of the time-traveler from beginning to end. We are all star-children, born into the universe, where we must wander from place to place and time to time in search of our own bliss. The trip also takes us to “inner space.” In three parts, Sun Dogs, as a themed collection, attempts to capture moments of wonder, loss and healing: 1. Planetarium, 2. Jealous Planet, and 3. Cosmic Therapies. The poems speak of the human journey – the odyssey of experience in a galaxy filled with legends and natural phenomena. Yet, the collection promises “cosmic therapy” – a time for something great.
Battered Suitcase Press
GALAXY I almost escaped the riddling road that forked into the highway's crotch where my journey met a doomed chariot and rider. I trailed dark blood into the fabled woods and fell asleep with no one to wake me from this ageless fiction that wormed itself out of my groin, and groaning, grew into the image and likeness of the sunheaded east. Prophecy pierced my ankle bones; a riddle, my skull. The black-robed west splattered my bowels on stone. Northern witches predicted my father's murder. The spiteful southern gate led to the core. To map the hero's body, entrails and organs insisted on inner space— odyssey of the body's hidden galaxy.
SUN DOGS When I tracked the turning sky with its blaze-bright haloes—solar and lunar—I was running with the sun dogs, baying with the moon dogs. I was mocked by other tricks of light. My star atlas was a night-watch with or without a telescope. Now you see it, now you don't – the bright smirk of the mock sun and the curled lip of the moon. The sky turned around and I ran from the dogs, hid myself in sightings of lesser lights. Recorded other tricks and buried my tracks. But the hounds pursued me in blindsight. In a galaxy of naked eyes, my optic nerves, in point-and-shoot, shot the moon and sun, centered the planets across the all-seeing sky. Sun dogs appear as bright spots to the left and right of the sun. In winter, sun dogs appear on the inner halo. When the sun is high, sun dogs show up outside the halo. Though rare, moon dogs come out at night.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anthony Labriola’s work has appeared in such publications as The Canadian Forum, PRISMinternational, Lo Straniero, Vallum: New International Poetics, Stone Voices, Still Point Arts Quarterly and Passion: Poetry. Shanti Arts has published his poetry collection, The Rigged Universe. Sun Dogs, published by Vagabondage Press, is his second collection. Anaphora Literary Press has published his novella, Devouring the Artist, as well as a collection of stories, The Pros & Cons of Dragon Slaying.
Labriola was born in Italy, but grew up in Canada. He comes from a large family, and many of his siblings are artists. He is married to his childhood sweetheart, Louisa Josephine. They have five grown-up children—each is an artist in his or her own right. His love of poetry began at a young age when he first read Dylan Thomas’s “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower.” The same force drove him to write with a focus on mystical realities. The theater also held a strange fascination for him, and he acted in, directed, and wrote plays. After graduating high school in the late 1960s, he studied English and French at the University of Toronto. Bent on teaching literature and the arts, he received a B. Ed. in English and Dramatic Arts from the Faculty of Education, and an M.A. from the Graduate Center for the Study of Drama. He taught English, Drama and Performing Arts for thirty-two years. He was also Curriculum Chair in the Arts and was inspired by the talents of his colleagues and students. He now lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and teaches Life Writing at Seneca College.