A Curious Moon

By Monty Rozema

Scorpio 𖤓 | Scorpio ⏾ | Leo ↑

This pieces has been selected by our editors to be nominated for the 2026 Pushcart Prize.

My dad always thinks there’s dogs barking – There’s not. He’s just losing it. 

I should know, because I come over twice a week to help look after him. I look after myself too, but just barely – I’m usually busy with my second job, or my third job, or my sister Louise, or with Louise’s third and most evil husband Gregory, or with one or both of my crazy nephews. 

But today everyone’s here in one place for the 4th of July – so I’m home with dad and the imaginary barking dogs and everything previously mentioned. We hear the whizzzzzzzzPOP! of a bottle rocket taking off. 

“Look, dad,” I say. “Hear the fireworks?”

“Poor dog,” my dad says, about the firework, which he thinks is a dog whining. He won’t wear his baseball cap, which is sitting on his lap. He’s bald, and everyone is worried that the brown and grey spots on the top of his head will turn into skin cancer. My dad’s not even that old. He usually realizes when he’s misremembered something – he can tell from the anxious look on the faces of the people around him. He knows he’s changing, and he doubts all his doubts. Except for the dogs, which he really, truly, thinks are there. 

The neighbors down the way did once have a female dog, and she did have puppies once, a long time ago – they gave the puppies away, and then she eventually died of cancer. I think my dad forgot about that part. Down the long gravel driveway, I hear the boys arguing over who gets to light the “purple rain.” My dad turns around in his lawn chair like he’s heard a sound. 

“Damnit,” he says to me, maybe, or just to himself. “Kids gettin’ the dogs riled up, and then they’re gonna be howling all night.”

“It’s just fireworks going off down the street, dad,” I say, swatting a mosquito away from my wrist. “It’s the 4th of July.”

“Damn right it is!” announces my sister’s husband Greg, arriving with hot dogs, buns, and accouterments. He knows our politics differ, and he likes to emphasize this whenever we’re together. He thinks arguments are a form of recreation. He married my sister with the express intention of giving her ulcers. 

“Maybe the coyotes want independence,” I say. I peel the seals off of the brand new condiment bottles. I’ll play along with Gregory today – let him have his freedom and his firecrackers. “Maybe they want checks and balances too.” 

“Dogs already have a congress,” my dad says. Gregory snorts and Louise whacks him on the pec. 

“They sure do,” I say, as a watch it to Gregory. 

“Dogs got all the same shit we got, just without all the bells and whistles.”

A roman candle pierces the sky, white then yellow then brownish-gold. Logan and Graham – my nephews – fly by, shirts off, clutching sparklers and screaming, before plunging back into the bushes again. 

I’m not even sure that my dad knows what he’s talking about when he says “congress.” Louise thinks he’s talking about, like, dogs in powdered wigs. I think he’s talking about, like, a meeting between delegates.

The one agreement we have made this 4th of July is to avoid the word “America.” We can say whatever other words we want – congress, country, independence – but not the capital-A word. Of course, the idea was that forbidding the word “America” would be a big enough stumbling block to discourage talking about America, which would never work entirely but could slow us down enough to give someone a chance to redirect the emotional life of the afternoon. Everyone agreed that regardless of the long, ongoing list of national grievances would not be helped or hindered by the sweet, buttery taste of corn-on-the-cob, or hotdogs, or watermelon. So all of that was still happening. This year, like every year, was an exercise in cognitive dissonance. 

I can tell that my sister isn’t pleased with the direction of the conversation. We’re not breaking any rules yet, but we’re approaching the line. She doesn’t like talking about the state of the Union or our dad’s budding auditory delusions. A 2-for-1 package is her maximum displeasure. 

“We need sharp sticks,” she says to the group. My father stays silent because he’s not a part of this. Gregory pops open a can of Busch Light in response. I stand up and ask to borrow my dad’s pocketknife.  

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Acres of messy forest is what you’ll find behind the house. The firepit is a stone’s throw from the garage, and behind the garage is a big wide-open clearing, and behind that is a hill with a winding path, littered with tilting birches and overgrown blackberry bushes. The sturdiest sticks for roasting are in the middle, where the path is wide and the birch branches are low and long, easy to snap and carve. 

A rushing sound, like the wave of an incoming tsunami, starts to prickle amongst the forest to my left. I stand still, still enough to feel mosquitos alighting on my bare ankles. And sure enough, I feel the rumbling through the bottoms of my feet mere moments before mass of chaos break through the trees:

A veritable parade of dogs – a stampede of dogs, truly – pours through the gap in the trees and dashes, panting and ragged, across the path. I was stricken by surprise that settled into awe. All kinds of dogs. Many wild dogs, surely coyotes and runaways, mixed in with mutts and shepherds, collared hounds and family labs, small and medium and large dogs in a fury of paws and shuffling of fur. A large dog is carrying a small dog in her mouth so she won’t be trampled in the brush. 

A brownish-red dog with bristly fur and a wide, smiling mouth is holding a stick. He looks very proud of it, like it denotes his importance somehow – if he were John Hancock, he may have a quill, but he is a dog, so he has a stick. He looks behind him to make sure that he is truly bringing up the rear, that none of his congressmen have fallen behind. Then he clatters into the forest, the edge of his staff bumping against disparate tree trunks. 

I hear the sound of squealing, panting, and shuffling paws disappear behind natural sounds of the area, underneath squelching tractors, logging equipment, rushing water and homing geese. 

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

When I get back to the firepit, Gregory is wasted, dad and the boys are hungry, and Ashleigh is angry. 

“Where were you!” she says, not as a question. “Corn is happening and no one’s helping me.”

“Stop barking at each other!” Dad barked. 

“I was at Dog Congress,” I said flatly. She snorted and handed me a bunch of foil-wrapped corn cobs. 

“Put these on the grill, senator,” she said.

“She can’t be a senator in dog congress. Gotta be a dog to be senator in dog congress!” My dad offered from his lawn chair. 

“BOYS!” Gregory screamed down the path to his brats. They were screeching and shaking the delicate Paper Birches with all their might. “Cut it out!”

“Just go get them, babe,” Ashleigh suggested, juggling corn. “They can grill their own hot dogs.” 

Gregory rolled out of his lawn chair. “Get your asses over here!” he bellowed. 

“Oh shit, I forgot the mayonnaise,” Ashleigh said. She looked at me in a panic. “Can you go grab it? It’s in the –” she did some quick internal math – “Nevermind, here, I’ll be right back,” she said, handing me the last of the remaining corn and jetting off towards the house. 

I peacefully oriented the rest of the corn over the fire on its grill rack. I used some tongs to rotate the corn that had already been cooking. The cookout was more peaceful like this – with just me and dad. I liked the fact that Ashleigh, Greg, and the boys were in the vicinity, but I preferred them from a distance. 

My dad worked on his s’more. His teeth were weaker now, and he chewed slower. Every bite of the graham cracker sounded like he was chewing glass. 

“Hey, dad,” I said quietly.  

“What,” he said, distracted. I brought him supplies for a s’more. I punctured his marshmallow on a long stick and handed it to him. I like to buoy him up with stuff. 

“You know, you may have been right.”

“Well of course I am!” he puffed. He murmured and rotated the marshmallow for a while. 

“I was just getting sticks. Where Ash and I used to build faerie houses and race up the hill. I saw some dogs there. All running through the woods at once.”

My dad nods solemnly. The embers of the fire sputter, his marshmallow wobbling on its stick. “They’ve been howling about it for weeks. Spreading the news.”

Maybe my dad had been hearing things. Like, actually hearing things. 

“I got the sense they were on their way to talk about what to do about us.” I tell him, reminding him of what he said earlier. 

“Well of course they were,” dad says, graham cracker crumbs sprinkling all over his lap as he gums his Independence Day treat. “We aren’t in charge anymore. Every other animal out there in this world is having their own congress right now – about us people, and what’s gotta be done about us. It’s not about stopping us – we’ve already done too much damage to be stopped. It’s about how we’ll be dealt with. If we’re lucky, this country finally has gone to the dogs. Wonder what they’ve decided.” 

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Dad’s old truck has been rotting in the driveway for years. He just slowly lost interest in driving it. He still reminds me that I can borrow it whenever I need to, but I honestly don’t think it’s even safe to drive anymore. I don’t remember the last time he tried to drive it. We just look at it, like a big old ugly piece of lawn art. 

I opt to spend the night in my childhood bedroom. I want to drive back in the morning, when all of the man-made thunder is done. I lay my head down on the pilling cotton pillowcase, and I listen hard until I hear, behind the peeling of a 2am Thunder 6 Rocket Pack, a series of howls: Mournful, decisive unison in the senate. 

Monty Rozema (they/them) is a queer artist from Seattle, Washington. They enjoy reading the newspaper, listening to 2000s techno, and playing Jenga. Their writing has been published by great weather for MEDIA, The Ugly Radio, Hash Journal, Mag 20/20, bestcolleges.com, and more. Their first full-length play, Disappearance at the Rocky Mountain Leatherdyke Snowpicnic, is currently in development.