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Anne Elezabeth Pluto grew up in Brooklyn, NY before it was cool. She is Professor of Literature and Theatre at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA where she is the artistic director of the Oxford Street Players. She is an alumna of Shakespeare & Company and was a member of the Worcester Shakespeare Company 2011 – 2016. She was a member of the Boston small press scene in the late 1980s and is one of the founders and editors at Nixes Mate Review and Nixes Mate Books. Her publications include chapbooks: The Frog Princess, White Pine Press (1985), eBook Lubbock Electric, Argotist ebooks (2012), Benign Protection, Cervena Barva Press (2016), the edited print edition of Lubbock Electric Nixes Mate Books (2018), and full length collection The Deepest Part of Dark, Unlikely Stories Press, NOLA (2020).

Anne Elezabeth Pluto

Dog and Bed

Your death was easier
in winter – the dog still
alive – my constant companion
learning to navigate the world
with only his right eye – I had
to bring myself completely to
the table – the one where
I hand fed him on the kitchen
floor disguising medications
to look and taste like treats.
He was brave – the cold January
afternoon when you died – he sat
next to me – suspended – the pewter
silence of the new year pressing
in my throat – the hospice nurse
came to fill out papers – and the funeral
director sent two young men –
they were late – it was a good day
for death – and we waited
warped in silence.
When they arrived – the dog
walked to the fence to guide
them in patiently sitting by
the hospital bed as they
wrapped you your sheet
lifted your washed and broken body
onto a gurney – the dog watched.
They zipped and once again he
led them out to the gate.
I turned off the bed – the mattress
deflating – the snake like hissing
at its unnatural end.
All is silence.
That night I still slept
on the couch – I had
forgotten how
to use a bed

— Anne Elezabeth Pluto

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