Fire Safety Week + A Labradoodle Sonnet

New poems from Danny Caine

Fire Safety Week

On the way to pickup
I replace the word love
with gun in all the songs.
Our son always insists
that a TV show isn’t good
unless bad guys are in it.
I will always gun you.
Gun me do. All you
need is gun. I know it
can happen here
and it probably will
but thinking otherwise
is the only way
I can get out of bed.

He runs out
of the building
and tells us this week
is Fire Safety Week.
Kara says Lord
help us. None of our
rented outlets are
grounded. After he
climbs in I pull
on the straps and
say that’s not
going anywhere.
Every day I pull
on the straps and say
that’s not going
anywhere. It’s the closest
I ever get to prayer.

A Labradoodle Sonnet

I keep seeing this bigass Town
and Country with MOBY DK
vanity plates and I am afraid
the Labradoodle Life is going
to get me. In the parking garage
at the preschool my car
is the only one covered in snow.
I’ve never wanted an attached garage
but it feels like an attached garage
wants me. Same with the matching
Subarus. I hear them calling me,
singing their song: In This House

We Believe. Finished basement. Adventure
Sandals. Wait, how do I already know the words?

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Danny Caine is the author most recently of Jewish American Dream, winner of the inaugural Sarabande Chapbook Prize. He’s also written four poetry collections as well as the books How to Protect Bookstores and Why and How to Resist Amazon and Why. His poetry has appeared in The Slowdown, LitHub, DIAGRAM, HAD, and Barrelhouse. He lives in Ohio. Find more at dannycaine.com.

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