David Dodd Lee
Half A Century Poem
Have I ever told you about my grandfather
How nights with a drink in his hand
He’d sit at a desk and look out at all the used cars
His one kidney failing (that’s all God gave him)
My bed has been dark and slow all week
My eyes in a kind of reserve
You might dig your hand down inside there and find blood near the roots
One inch to the left and the $500 slab of Carrara marble cracks
Close to his spine, my grandfather’s
Rain on the windshields and asphalt
And the street lights in winter that he claimed calmed him so much
Inventory
(for Arthur Vogelsang)
reading Arthur's Left Wing of a Bird
when a plane stops in the sky
in neighborhoods bordering
inland lakes they call these flying dreams . . .
you might be watching a bead of her sweat from your Adirondack chair
studying for theology class
or say the bodies keep piling up
dark clouds of gnats swarming over the boiling inlets . . .
an empty noose swings in the breeze near the abandoned fish hatchery
wings on the pterodactyl fall right off in the moonlight
the eyes on a pig flow imperceptibly inward
the dead fish in the ponds begin eating the shadows of all the other dead fish
that's when a branch snaps you in the face
the plane in the sky begins breaking in half
David Dodd Lee is the author of nine full-length books of poems & a chapbook, including Downsides of Fish Culture (New Issues Press, 1997), Arrow Pointing North (Four Way Books, 2002), Abrupt Rural (New Issues Press, 2004), Orphan, Indiana (University of Akron Press, 2010), Animalities (Four Way Books, 2014), and two volumes of Ashbery erasure poems. He has published fiction in Willow Springs, New World Writing, Sou’wester, Green Mountains Review, and elsewhere. He is also a painter and a collage artist. Recent artwork has appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Permafrost, The Hunger, Pinball, & Twyckenham Notes. In 2016 he began making sculpture, most of which he installs on various public lands, surreptitiously. Unlucky Animals, a book of collages, photographs, new original poems, erasures, and dictionary sonnets is forthcoming in late 2020.
Return to September 2020 Edition
Have I ever told you about my grandfather
How nights with a drink in his hand
He’d sit at a desk and look out at all the used cars
His one kidney failing (that’s all God gave him)
My bed has been dark and slow all week
My eyes in a kind of reserve
You might dig your hand down inside there and find blood near the roots
One inch to the left and the $500 slab of Carrara marble cracks
Close to his spine, my grandfather’s
Rain on the windshields and asphalt
And the street lights in winter that he claimed calmed him so much
Inventory
(for Arthur Vogelsang)
reading Arthur's Left Wing of a Bird
when a plane stops in the sky
in neighborhoods bordering
inland lakes they call these flying dreams . . .
you might be watching a bead of her sweat from your Adirondack chair
studying for theology class
or say the bodies keep piling up
dark clouds of gnats swarming over the boiling inlets . . .
an empty noose swings in the breeze near the abandoned fish hatchery
wings on the pterodactyl fall right off in the moonlight
the eyes on a pig flow imperceptibly inward
the dead fish in the ponds begin eating the shadows of all the other dead fish
that's when a branch snaps you in the face
the plane in the sky begins breaking in half
David Dodd Lee is the author of nine full-length books of poems & a chapbook, including Downsides of Fish Culture (New Issues Press, 1997), Arrow Pointing North (Four Way Books, 2002), Abrupt Rural (New Issues Press, 2004), Orphan, Indiana (University of Akron Press, 2010), Animalities (Four Way Books, 2014), and two volumes of Ashbery erasure poems. He has published fiction in Willow Springs, New World Writing, Sou’wester, Green Mountains Review, and elsewhere. He is also a painter and a collage artist. Recent artwork has appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Permafrost, The Hunger, Pinball, & Twyckenham Notes. In 2016 he began making sculpture, most of which he installs on various public lands, surreptitiously. Unlucky Animals, a book of collages, photographs, new original poems, erasures, and dictionary sonnets is forthcoming in late 2020.
Return to September 2020 Edition