EMMA WINSOR WOOD

WATCH FOR DOGS

They’re dirty, they smell, they track in mud, sticks, and leaves. They howl, they growl. They lick their asshole then you, they hump their toys, they jump on the old, they nip the young. They vomit on the carpet, they piss on the rug, they drool. They roll in dead animals then sleep under the covers. Like us, they dream and, in their dreams, they sometimes kick, scratch, growl, or bark, and never once apologize for having woken you up. They steal your spot in the middle of the night when you get up to pee. They sniff crotches and mouths and other animals’ shit, they pant too loudly, they want to go out as soon as you sit down to read. One always needs the toy the other one has. They scratch your arms and your wood stairs, they shit all over the yard, their water bowl needs to be filled again, they need an ice cube every time you open the freezer and a treat every time you leave the house. They eat without chewing, they drink then drip water all over the floor, they shed all over your bedding, your furniture, your favorite clothes. They don’t get off the bed when you and your husband have sex. They pull on the leash or else stop and sniff everything, they bark at your neighbors, they chew up the most expensive toys you buy, you are always buying them new toys. They’re always home, you’re never really alone, and they always have to be near you, on you or against you, and yet only on their own terms—when you want to cuddle, they choose to curl up alone at the end of the bed, and if you shut the door on them, they whine, yelp, scratch. They’re obsessed with food; one of these days you’ll break a leg tripping over one in the kitchen, but they look so terribly sad when they beg it saps all your resolve to finally stop slipping them treats and so you do, and so you can’t really blame them if they beg, can you? They hate to go outside in the rain and will hold it all day when the weather’s bad, but when it’s nice, they want to be outside all day, in the sun on the deck, where you worry about them wandering away and getting hit by one of your roommates driving home, even though you have a WATCH FOR DOGS sign at the top of your driveway, even though you sent a special email about dog safety when they moved in. When they’re hurt or sick, it’s painful to watch them struggle, and when you help, they think you’re hurting them more. You worry about the quality of the kibble you feed them, the bones you give them, the amount of exercise they get, their happiness, their social life, and how much they weigh; you worry about them as you would over a child, like I imagine I will, one day, over a child, but they’re not children, they’re dogs, just dogs, a friend tells you, and if she weren’t such an old friend, you might hate her for that.

THE KIND OF SPORT ARTISTIC BOOKISH GIRLS COULD DO

I can’t remember when I first started loving horses. I just did.

At school, my best friend Caroline and I would often pretend we were horses: using the belts from our uniform tunics as reins, we took turns “riding” each other; we perfected the whinny (you have to use the back of your throat); we ate green salads for lunch without utensils; and, of course, we read all the classics: Black Beauty, The Black Stallion, National Velvet, My Friend Flicka, The Pony Club.

I wish I could remember which came first: reading about horses or loving them. Most likely, they were simultaneous, one feeding into the other. The books I read—including the non-horsey 19th-century novels where horses were ever-present, if only as a way of getting around—made me want to ride, and riding made me want to read about horses. Riding was, in my mind—again probably because of 19th-century novels and the sidesaddle riding skirts I’d seen in old paintings—a romantic activity. It wasn’t for jocks, like basketball or soccer. It was graceful, girlish. It was the kind of sport artistic, bookish girls could do.

For me, riding was also aspirational. I didn’t take physical risks, but I wanted to be the kind of girl who did. And riding, though looked down on by my soccer-player husband as a “pseudo-sport,” was more dangerous than most “real” sports. One could fall and get kicked in the head or trampled or simply land the wrong way and puncture a lung or fracture the spine. Even just being around horses was dangerous—they could kick you or bite you, step on your foot or push you up against a wall. I was keenly aware of all of these possibilities; even when I was having fun on a horse—galloping through a field or cantering figure-eights in a ring—I never fully lost sight of everything that could go wrong.

What I loved about horses was also what I feared in them—their wildness. Even the dullest lesson pony could suddenly startle and gallop away or buck with joy or frustration. The ultimate dream was not to “break” that wildness, but to gentle it just enough so that you, and only you, could manage the horse.

This was why The Black Stallion was our favorite of all the horse books: in it, a shipwrecked boy washes up on a desert island with the horse he freed from the hold—a fiery black Arabian stallion. Alec, the boy, must win the trust of the stallion he nicknames “the Black,” and the two form a close bond. When Alec is eventually rescued, the horse comes home with him, where it becomes clear he is not tame. He is only tame for Alec.

Perhaps young girls dream about horses because they are taught to dream about love, but they can’t have love yet. So they go looking for it elsewhere.

The dog we had growing up was obsessed with my mom; he followed her everywhere. I used to put his leash on and drag him around the house with me. I wanted that kind of love. It was the same with horses: Alec and his stallion were soulmates. I must’ve known I wasn’t going to find my soulmate riding lesson horses, but I could pretend, just as I did with boys at the time, that there was something between us. Proximity was enough. The daydream was enough.

MY NEW CAR

My new car gets 32mpg on the highway. My new car has an advanced frontal airbag system. My new car is silver and smooth with rounded edges. It looks like a jellybean.

My new car is 189.9 inches long 72.4 inches wide, or 1,145.73 square feet. My new car is 0.02 acres. I own 0.02 acres. They are moveable and quickly degrading in value.

My new car has hill descent control, vehicle dynamics control, and a traction control system. My new car is automatic. It has bucket seats and an eight-way power driver seat. My new car has heated seats. It was built in a factory in Lafayette, Indiana.

My new car and I live in Santa Cruz, California. Most days are sunny. But, in the winter, it rains and when it rains, it pours and puddles form in the road which the mist obscures. My new car has many features that make it extremely competent in all conditions; it is not afraid of hydroplaning into a tree or a ditch, of skidding out on icy roads. It doesn’t care about the rain. It has new windshield wipers. It has no thoughts or feelings.

My new car holds 18.5 gallons of regular, unleaded gas. My new car has racked up 22,000 miles in only one year. My new car has Active Torque Vectoring and a 2.5-liter DOHC aluminum-alloy 16-valve 4-cylinder engine.

My new car is in the driveway now, resting, its engine letting out gentle clinks as it cools to air temperature, each of its parts shrinking and sliding against each other, like tectonic plates in miniature. My new car is a hunk of metal, inflexible and motionless, an object to be acted upon, not with. My new car is not ‘smart’; it has no ‘self’, no pre-programmed ethical algorithm. All it has is a mechanical voice used to read the text messages that arrive while I’m driving.

My dogs love to be driven. They always bound into my car, ready for an adventure, then stick their heads out the open windows to sniff the breeze, their hair fluttering crazily in the wind. Simply being in my car, even at a standstill, seems to make them happy. My dogs love to be driven, but they have no idea how a car works. Even the smarter one occasionally tries to get in my lap while I’m driving.

I love to drive my dogs but driving them also makes me worry. I worry their toenails will scratch or puncture my new car’s leather seats. I worry about the mud, sand, and twigs they track in. I worry one will jump out an open window to chase a deer, I worry I’ll brake abruptly—for a squirrel to cross the road, for instance—and send them flying into the back of a seat, giving them whiplash or a bruised skull or worse. I worry I’ll slip off the road, rear end another car, get T-boned, and, without seatbelts to hold them in, my dogs’ll smash through my new car’s windshield and die. Or perhaps they’ll smash into me, and we’ll both die. A dog in a car is a potential projectile.

There’s no need to worry, my husband tells me.

But I do: I worry, and I clean: I vacuum the car’s interior. I dust, and I polish.

I decide to give her a name. I call her Alice. It doesn’t suit her.

Alice has daytime running lights and dusk-sensing headlights. Alice has fog lights and a rear window wiper. Alice can sense when a passenger is seated in the passenger seat, but sometimes she thinks a very heavy bag is a passenger.

I take Alice to the car wash, where we glide through the multicolored electric lights that make a rainbow of the soap, through the swishy lint-free cut-outs that make me flinch as they smack the windshield, and finally, through the small vacuums that suction all the droplets up. After, I use a tissue to wipe off the grime that’s still gathered in the declivity surrounding her rear license plate. She looks shiny, beautiful, nearly new.

My life is in your hands, Alice, I tell her, both hands on the wheel.

Alice has turn signal mirrors, self-leveling headlights, emergency braking assist, 3-point seatbelts, rear door child safety locks. Alice has an overall five-star safety rating: five stars in a frontal crash; five in a side crash; four in a rollover. Alice was a 2018 Top Safety Pick by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Highway Loss Data Institute.

A sentence from the report on how cars of Alice’s make and model perform in collisions reads: The dummy’s position in relation to the door frame, steering wheel, and instrument panel after the crash test indicates that the driver’s survival space was maintained very well.

A sentence from my statement about what happened when I totaled my parents’ car reads: I thought there was an “arrow” for a left turn, and that it was green. So, I turned. Without waiting. The oncoming traffic went full-speed ahead.

There was no arrow. The “oncoming traffic,” a rental car driven by a nice man in town for a wedding, hit the passenger-side of my parents’ car—just ahead of the passenger: my friend Evan.

The airbags deployed into our survival space. I bit my tongue—hard enough to render it bruised and swollen a couple hours later—but Evan and I and my two friends in the back seat all walked away.

A good accident is one where everyone walks away, the nice man said to me, kindly, as I cried by the side of the road.

That car had to be towed. It was scrapped.

Alice is not my friend. Alice is a machine of death. A machine of death I enter happily, as if I were at home.

There is nothing either good nor bad but thinking makes it so.
I am thinking. Alice’s engine is purring
as they say
but really it’s more like a stutter
or maybe a mutter.

Emma Winsor Wood is the author of the poetry collection The Real World (BlazeVOX books, 2022) and the translator of A Failed Performance (Plays Inverse, 2018). Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, ZYZZYVA, Fence, jubilat, DIAGRAM, The Colorado Review, and BOAAT, among others. She has two dogs and two young children and cannot keep a plant alive.