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Bestselling Author, Timothy Gager has published 18 books of fiction and poetry, which includes his latest novel, Joe the Salamander. He hosted the successful Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, MA from 2001 to 2018, and started a weekly virtual series in 2020. He has had over 1000 works of fiction and poetry published, 17 nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His work also has been nominated for a Massachusetts Book Award, The Best of the Web, The Best Small Fictions Anthology and has been read on National Public Radio. In 2023, Big Table Publishing published an anthology of twenty years of his selected work, with 150 pages of new material: The Best of Timothy Gager. Timothy was the Fiction Editor of The Wilderness House Literary Review, and the founding co-editor of The Heat City Literary Review. A graduate of the University of Delaware, Timothy lives in Dedham, MA.

Timothy Gager

Dog Years

The dog now takes more pills
than my father and
swims more than I do

Every day on this earth
she ages a week, a year
in about 7 of those.

my father’s head is in clouds eternally
at least the dog in their nineties
can find a tree to pee on.

There are no rings of a bell, which sing
without the rings of a tree’s
cross section

of time, never dissipating
when night darkens the dog,
the man no longer can see.

— Timothy Gager

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