Fly Dog
i run my fingers through its thousands of ommatidia to learn / what knowledge evolution imparts on wild things / with domestic names. i wash its hairy legs / with my long and strong shampoo. it must’ve been fighting / fleas for a taste of dung caked on a cow’s bony ass. i wash its / plungermouth with hydrochloric acid before letting it anywhere near / my face. it can survive / this. it can survive anything i throw at it and i’ve thrown it all: my hardbacks, electric bats hungry for arthropod blood, my hands, my freelance salary at imported A5 wagyu dungcakes. it wants none of it. always headbutts me a gift of ocelli, which tells me it’s time / for a fly. we drive and it buzzbarks / at the monochromatic kaleidoscope of other fly dogs in the park. they rave over other companions’ rancid heads. they bin hop. garbage crawl. zip in circles chasing their own ghost tails. by the time mosquitoes have mafia’d their way into the park, they’ve all spiralled down. are sprawled on a carpet / of their own wings. they stretch / their hairy foreleg towards each other like protagonists / in their final act. the ampulla in their head-heart dreaming / of every leg, of every stump they’ve ever humped. every cow they’ve chased down every garbage-lined street. every asshole they’ve ever sniffed. and loved. and hated. and loved again.
Lavanya Arora (they/he) is an independent biology & food researcher and writer from India. Their literary work has found a home in journals like The Manchester Review, Frontier Poetry, Josephine Quarterly, Honey Literary, and ANMLY, among others. They dream of extensive dinner dates with fictional characters while (begrudgingly) editing their debut novel and poetry manuscript. They’ve been longlisted for the 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Find them on Instagram @lavaurora.