Were Any Animals Harmed in the Making of Yellowstone?

By Puneet Dutt

The man in the hotel bistro tells his buddies
It went right through my stomach, and we used
fishing line to close it up. I wished for Wolverine

claws when I was young, metal sewn into muscle,
blades appearing at danger’s prompting—so I could
slice the air in warning, before skin—and yet

I have continued to breathe. My sister would sit on
my chest to pound at me, and I took it. You get lost
in it. That rough sea. My other sister says

she needs discipline. Someone told her what to do,
one punch after another,
before the sudden drop off the cliff of

adulthood. She says now look at me, asked to swim.
Like trees that crashed across bridges.
Sometimes we just take it. My sisters and

I—or maybe even you—close our eyes and
swallow, and not come up. A pigeon walking over
another pigeon, as if it were a rock.

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Resurrection of the Dodo

By Puneet Dutt

My son says, I wanna discover fossils.
I say, look here, you. Standing before you
            was once a creature, no more.

He asks if we can bring the Dodo back,
and I want to say yes, I want to say,
            resurrection is not only for the gods.

That science, pitying the layman,
would want another buck, another trick.
            I want to say, here is the pick—find the plaque.

I was once a grand and marvelous thing
people wanted—and dug.

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War Machines

By Puneet Dutt

          ​After Paul Muldoon

Recall history books where war changed landscapes.
A hill never a hill, but a mound of buried.
Mounds now filled, buried become landscapes.
And so we see every day, wrote Suetonius,

every day we see, Caesar gave a gladiatorial show
besides. And when Sikandar the Great beheld
elephants, elephants became war machines,
became tanks—1857, and they say, become tanks.

Neighbor buys shotgun, and says, don’t come up— 
if they don’t come up, he won’t use the shotgun
 —he gave a gladiatorial show besides. 2024,
and everyone needs a warrior practice, I’m told,

to watch from a landscape, changed. See
every day on TV, a gladiatorial show besides,
mounds made. Recall history makes hills,
​though we may inherit love, become elephants.

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A Catalog of How've You Beens

By Puneet Dutt

          Inspired by Todd Dillard's "A Catalog of How Are You Doings"

There’s the ones you get from co-workers,
            employees down long halls, persons with whom
you once shared after-work drinks. They say it
            like cradling an egg with a spoon, rattling
 
            in its measured level of wokeness, though you know that,
no matter what you say, an image has already formed
            in their head of a museum tapestry: Madonna with Child— 
the gushing Trevi Fountain. Then there are the ones
 
from long-muted girlfriends reaching through
            WhatsApp to festoon your neck like a garland of marigolds— 
a project wall in a school covered in sloppy sketches.
            Something about their surplus awh’s and
 
            ‘I can’t believe its!’ How your cries as you were wheeled in said:
‘No, I don’t want it!’ As if the pain were a part
            of some long-winded refund policy on the back
of a crumpled receipt. There are ones from distant cousins
 
who arrive in your city, like origami kites
            already facing in other directions. Your daughter
turns one and they sound silent trumpet emojis.
            Your son turns six and people place paper thin ‘Congrats!’
 
            in your palm. Once or twice you get ones as heavy
as clay pots left in the rain. Except this evaporates
            with the passing days. You’re naked and leaking,
and haven’t you memorized this song already?
 
Say things are good. Say it’s great. Say
            what a wonderful world. Say how’re things with you?

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What is the correct Latin phrase for 'The die is cast'?

By Puneet Dutt

          My father blocked a road with a gun in his 20s—he clears up after I ask him the story of
the talvar. Some 38 years of not talking, and this is the first thing he admits to, like a peony bursts
          open when cut. His friend   I learn   was a cop and he grew the confidence all friends do
when their friends have head honcho in the blood. Can I see the gun? would have been
     inevitable. Tiptoeing to a bedroom closet where the spare gun was stowed as
ordinary as a pair of socks. So what did you do?
          We threatened
          a family
          entering their home.
          Just a gentle squeeze. The kind that is asked
          without words as favors of big shots.
          And I picture him, hands untrained
          to the metal
          marveling at its beauty, its ingenuity
          listening to music, probably Zeppelin.
My father wears shirts with loud prints
and popped collars. Obsessed with
movie thugs and the brutalist
lingo. He once bought a long
black peacoat and when he
began to lose his hair
we called him Tony
Soprano. And he
didn’t stop us— 
tell us no. So I
imagine
him
capable,
brandishing
this gun like
a second
appendage.
How is it we’re always where we’re meant to be? One moment pow pow pow Nerf with my son and
the next the descendent of a hired thug. What might I learn if I were to ask about a totally
different subject, the populist wave, interest rates—or even love.

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Puneet Dutt’s The Better Monsters was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry and was shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award. Her most recent chapbook was longlisted for the 2020 Frontier Digital Chapbook Contest, selected by Carl Phillips. Dutt lives in Markham with her partner and two kids. puneetdutt.com