ODE TO DOGS I am tired of hearing about dogs used as metaphors for the uncivilized. Imagine a world in which humans possessed at least twenty times as many olfactory receptors, able to distinguish the tang of cancer rising musk-like from the bedsheets next to a smoldering ash tray, able to detect that one drop of blood in every five quarts of water, to know what you did last night no matter how many times you soap-scrubbed the evidence. It does not take savagery but more love than we can muster to lick the hand you've sniffed, to love despite the perfume of sins we wear each day like a halo. "Winner of the Codhill Poetry Chapbook Prize for 2007, Michael Meyerhofer's The Clay-Shaper's Husband ponders the ruins of everyday struggle, excavating grandeur and sorrow with keen, audible presence." --Pauline Uchmanowicz, final judge Michael Meyerhofer's first book, Leaving Iowa, won the Liam Rector First Book Award. He is also the author of four chapbooks and was recently the recipient of the James Wright Poetry Award, the Annie Finch Prize, and the Laureate Prize. His work has appeared in Ploughshares, Arts & Letters, North American Review, Southern Poetry Review, Green Mountains Review and others.