By Cayleigh Baillargeon

Walter won’t stop yelling
about daylight savings time.
Arguments about the railroad industry
and commerce don’t hold up well
against a dog who can’t read a clock
and knows our public transportation is a fucking joke
and capitalism is a systematic and moral failure. 

Walter knows he was fed at this time
yesterday and the day before that.
He is tired of being gaslit.

He knows it doesn’t have to be like this.
Walter’s been to Arizona enough times
to have been called queer by a cowboy in Tombstone
to piss on a saguaro and shit on petrified wood.
This is a dog with culture,
he’s been there in November. 
he knows Arizona ignores clock changes
like they ignore the needs of the reservations.

Choices are being made for him,
but he knows it doesn’t have to be this way.

The hungry don’t stay hungry long,
they find a way to eat or
a place to die.

It’s best to feed Walter before he’s screaming,
but he doesn’t have opposable thumbs or an income,
so I push dinnertime back a little everyday
til he gets used to the new time,
and the screaming stops
making space for the seasonal 
depression and Thanksgiving
menu planning.