Two Dogs At the Gateway

Two Dogs at the Gateway By Sy Roth They slurped their saliva, huge globs, big, barking mouthfuls dripping from their jowls like milky icicles Teeth-bared lips, They guarded the gateway. Pleased by their vacated spittle, their noses now sniffed the air, and like a marching band of electric ants they ogled the nearing invader. Anew, the soppy, conglomeration of spittle wells at their muzzles forming a frothy milkshake determined to expel the approaching trespasser. His hands stretched out flat in peaceful kindness, prophylactic, heavy-breathing moseying him to the gateway wraps him in a pulsing eagerness. A satyr’s blessing upon him as he approaches Where the two dogs growled ominous presentiments-- Twin Cerberuses, Headache kin of dashed wishes. Evening shadows stifle all desires. Lips part in anticlimax. He rolls to the other side away from the yapping hounds, away from the uncomfortable pauses, away from the anticipation onto a sterile, flattened field where done yet reeks of a flaccid fantasy. A grotesquery of mordant imagination content to sleep on the other side of the booming roar away from the slurping beasts, he drops hands down to his side. Tomorrows march on and the gateway, a finale wrapped in the twins’ slurping, slams shut.