This is a poem in this series of 144 poems that I’m writing based on the dodeks, or twelfth parts, of the Zodiac signs. As far as I know, everybody else calls them dodekatemoria, but that’s a very complicated word to say, so I just call them dodeks.
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Leo of Taurus: The Pet Supply Store
7° TAurus 30′ to 9° TAurus 59′
You know who keeps pets? Everyone keeps pets.
Here’s a dude in his Sunday tie and suit,
and a woman who walks like Marine vets,
with swivel-scan head. This guy has a boot
for a broken shin — and they have tattoos
covering both legs from angle to shorts.
These two wear jeans like their animal moos;
he looks like he files stories on sports
for local TV — cats, dogs and parrots,
snakes and mice and rats… don’t forget the doves!
Lizards eat crickets and rabbits, carrots,
and every single person here’s in love
with some darling creature not like themselves —
for them, they’ve ventured out to raid the shelves.
Image: A wild range of human customers and staff wander a pet supply store; some dogs are here too, and maybe a cat or a bird or both; there may be other pets up for adoption as well.
Important Relationships
- Part of Ptolemy’s Term of Mercury
- Part of Decan I of Taurus (administrated by Venus): The Plough
Colophon
This is a part of a series of poems based on the dodekatemoria, or twelfth parts, of the Zodiac signs. The dodekatemoria are sub-segments of the Zodiac, each representing two degrees thirty minutes (2° 30′) of arc; there are 144 dodeks (as I call them) in the full Zodiac, or twelve in each sign. Each dodek is supposed to be a recapitulation or miniature repetition or summary of its parent zodiac sign, as though it were filtered through the lens of the main sign.
The Sun crosses this distance of 2° 30′ in about two and a half days, making these dodeks cognate with the Moon, which crosses one sign of the Zodiac, or thirty degrees (30°) in about two and a half days. The Sun’s passage through a dodek thus mirrors the Moon’s passage through a sign, and squeezes a “mini-year” of passage through twelve signs into a single month.
Each series of dodeks begins at 0° 00′ of its parent sign with the same sign, and there are four dodeks in each sequence of 10° degrees. Each poem in this series will give a (my) name of the dodek, its relevant degrees, a sonnet describing it, a 1-2 sentence description of the dodek, and some other information.
