On Goya’s “The Submerged Dog”
52 inches of pallid yellow Pouring down vertically - its incessant Visual silence invites screaming. Its Formlessness defies definition. Is It a sprawling, sick sallow sky? Or a Massive mountain, bearing no footholds? Your Eyes pan down, down. 52 inches might As well be eternity. Its horrors Height and simplicity – un-scalable, Insurmountable - its pathos pervades Your crevices. Then suddenly. Just. Stops. Abruptly, you now confront an up-arced brown form. Is this Earth? Is it quicksand? Murky sea? An illusory refuge promising Sanctuary? And then you notice it. A flash of broad black brush stroke, it bisects Up and down, sky and ground: an agent of Between-ness. Suspended below yellow, Submerged in brown: it’s the solitary Head of a dog. Wide with fear (or despair), Its white-flecked eyes gaze imploringly out Beyond the interminable up-ness To some hypothetical salvation. Is its torso petrified within that Swathe of earth-brown oil? Or do its unseen Legs flurry to keep it afloat? Is this Wasted wanting in sure defeat’s face? No – To keep desire’s vessel - the head – abreast, However absent the body or vast The abyss – we can aspire no higher than this. Mindy Watson Mindy Watson is a DC/Northern Virginia-based creative nonfiction writer and federal writer/editor. She holds an MA in Writing (Nonfiction) from The Johns Hopkins University and a BA in English for Illinois Wesleyan University. Her nonfiction has appeared (or is forthcoming) in Ars Medica and Thread: A Literary Journal; her poetry has appeared in The Quarterday Review.
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July 2025
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