(PROSE POEM)

FAMILIARIS

​EMILY SANFORD

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​Unwise to leave at dark, but there was nothing to be done—you in your nightgown, counters cleaned. The dog ran off with wolves everywhere and the internet was down. In the road’s headlit black moments after the hit, dreading the discovery of dog or wolf, paralytic, I sat with mouth open, silenced the radio and keened before cracking the door—scanning for bloodied fur on night’s chrome bumper, imagining telling you what could be the worst case, wheezing like no tomorrow. You always told me never go down that street without plotting good doors to knock on in case of the worst. Under the tire, an old lawn chair blown from the ditch. In that instant the dog was fine and accident amusing until I turned, stared down by a wolf between the driver’s seat and where I stood. The phone rang—it was you—the wolf bolted. I got in and closed the door, and in the back seat the dog wept.

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Emily Sanford was born in Nova Scotia and holds an MA in Literature and Performance from the University of Guelph. She is the winner of the 2016 Eden Mills Writers' Festival Literary Award for Poetry and 2018 Janice Colbert Poetry Award, and her poetry was listed amongst The 10 Best Poems of 2016 by Vancouver Poetry House. Her work appears in Canthius, Grain Magazine, Minola Review, newpoetry.ca, and Plenitude Magazine, and a recent poem was set to music for four-part choir by composer EKR Hammell. Emily works at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies and co-curates the popular Brockton Writers Series.