Bone

Francis Dylan Waguespack

The catahoula slipped his chain 
at blue-night, loped across 
the tall grass to join the coyotes,
their yip-song ripping through the dark.

I followed the sound to water, 
found the moon face-down, 
floating dead in the cowpond.

The dog kept running, never looked back.
The coyotes sang him thin and wild.

The moon just lay there,
big bone 
in black water.

Francis Dylan Waguespack is a painter and barback from New Orleans very much enjoying his rookie year in poetry. He writes about home, the politics of disaster, and being from a place and in a body that both live under threat. He is 34, and therefore recently found out about birds. His work appears or is forthcoming in ONLY POEMS, wildness, Foglifter, Salvation South, and elsewhere. His full-length manuscript, Tooth Gaps in the Archives, is a finalist for the 2025 Button Poetry First Book Award and for the 2025 St. Lawrence Book Award. He is nominated by January House Literary Journal for a 2026 Pushcart Prize in Poetry.