POETRY BY COLIN DODDS

Colin Dodds grew up in Massachusetts and completed his education in New York City. His poetry has appeared in more than a hundred fifty publications, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. The poet and songwriter David Berman (Silver Jews, Actual Air) said of Dodds’ work: “These are very good poems. For moments I could even feel the old feelings when I read them.” Dodds is also the author of several novels, including WINDFALL and The Last Bad Job, which the late Norman Mailer touted as showing “something that very few writers have; a species of inner talent that owes very little to other people.” And his screenplay, Refreshment, was named a semi-finalist in the 2010 American Zoetrope Contest. Colin lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife Samantha. You can find more of his work at thecolindodds.com.

The Saints Go Marching Out

Living all alone like this

Is a lot like living on a pier

It ain’t good and it ain’t bad

But you go through a lot of beer

Keeping my chin up, my head down

Lost in a misinterpretation

Wandering this third-rate town

With my fifth-rate education

Past the digital jukebox

And the loud high fives

We talk over each other

We talk for our lives

You thought I’d given up

But you couldn’t be sure

I may be a fuckup

But I’m no amateur

I never know the hour

Or the very minute

But there’s a point in the night

When there’s no profit left in it

It isn’t at six, or even at ten

The real sun sets at last call

Wherever unwanted men

Neuter themselves with alcohol

The Sermon in the Hole

The rain sweeps the street,

calls the old drunk out of his stool,

stirs him to pronounce the sermon in the hole.

“Liquor alone will not save you,”

he promises.

“The Jim Beam in your eye,

the Wild Turkey rising from its ashes,  

the Old Oversoul of Old Overholt.

“There is no binge that won’t pass.

The names of God are so much grass.

“The guy you say you are

is only a scaffolding cathedral

built on the back of an itchy dog.

“So?

“Do you dare pray the prayer, pull the blue wire,

that takes everything, even the prayers,

apart?”

I lower my head to my drink,

in a momentary ritual

by which I approve of myself

and dodge exorcism

for one more night.

~Colin Dodds