Mom and Dad never let me have pets. I would wish they’d let me go to see a man about a dog. My sister, Melanie, told me that if I wanted one, I’d have to go and see some man about a dog.
Dogs are a lot of work. You have to walk them, feed them, bathe them. I was fast asleep when the yelling started. My parents didn’t like when sis told them she was seeing a man about a dog.
I last saw her on her eighteenth birthday, when she kissed me on the head as I lay in bed and said, “I’ll be back soon. Tell Mom and Dad that I’m gonna see a man about your dog.”
Melanie hugged me tight, too tight, and then left. She always went out late, so I wasn’t worried. I dreamt of wagging tails. I was excited for when she came back from seeing a man about a dog.
But she didn’t come back. My excitement turned to worry until we got our first letter from her. I heard my parents talking about her seeing someone. I just assumed it was the man with the dog.
My sister returned a year later, not with my bundle of fur, but with a baby girl named Pepper. Pepper was small, too small. I figured Melanie had given up on seeing a man about my dog.
Why did she come home? Why did she leave for so very long? She couldn’t have been alone for all that time. I know it takes two to make a baby. Did he leave her to see a man about a dog?
My parents and Melanie and Pepper left one day. When they came back, sis came to me and wept. She whispered as she held me in her arms, “Pepper went to go see a man about a dog.”
Artist’s Statement:
“When I was prepping to write my pantoum, I knew I would be repeating a phrase many times over. I needed the repetition to mean different things depending on the context. Some expressions, such as “I was seeing a man about a dog,” don’t mean what they say. They can have weird origins and be nonsensical, and that’s precisely why I picked this expression.
I went through many expressions, including: “Like chalk and cheese” and “Bob’s your uncle,” but none of them inspired me to make the story layered.
Seeing a man about a dog is obviously about a girl being secretive and rude to her parents. But I noticed after I wrote the poem that it’s also about being independent and living with yourself. As the kid gets older throughout the year that Melanie is away, his need for a dog fades away slowly, and he realizes that nobody was ever actually talking about a dog.The girl is named Melanie and the baby named Pepper because Dog Years matches the storyline of the song “She’s Leaving Home” by The Beatles. Melanie is the real girl from the song, and Pepper is a reference to the album name.”
