Leo, Timothy Ashley: The Dog's Letter

Ugly Duckling Presse, paperback

Publication Date: May 1, 2026

Publisher Marketing: The Dog's Letter is a sequence of sounds and silences recovered from the troughs of caring for a child with terminal illness. A pattern of voices traces the contours of a yellow zone, between the blank spaces of a ward to the exhaustion of the first person. In the heat the child Maya emerges, refusing reprieve. Minimal and arthritic verses swim beneath a fragile surface in anticipation of a puncture.

"In these astute, perceptive, and engaged litanies, our speaker navigates the challenge of cataloguing impending loss: loss of a child, loss of a sense of self, and loss of time before another greater loss arrives. Attending closely to both the body and the world that must contain it, these poems move with steady and harrowing observation. The sequence's central reckoning is between the fallibilities of parenthood and a parent's own humanity: 'I wondered how he lost our child // when I had her / so firmly between my teeth.' These poems ask at once to 'Carry this body / to the bed, remove the hurt, and try, / try to leave in the life' while also hoping that the material world might show enough grace to 'let my child who needs to fall / fall free.' Urgent, intimate, and crushing, The Dog's Letter marks a daring exploration from an exceptional new voice." —Rob Macaisa Colgate