Colin Dodds is the author of three books, Another Broken Wizard, WINDFALL and The Last Bad Job. His writing has appeared in more than two hundred publications, and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net Anthology. Colin’s book-length poem That Happy Captive was a finalist for the Trio House Press Louise Bogan Award as well as the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award in 2015. His his screenplay, Refreshment, was named a semi-finalist in the 2010 American Zoetrope Contest. Colin lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and daughter. See more of his work at thecolindodds.com.
Rogues’ Gallery
Milk knotted to cheese, cheese folded to flesh
flesh staring out its own barred windows
bargaining with the rogues’ gallery
of things I need to think
just to think at all
The Misunderstanding Hall of Fame
The Marketers’ Valhalla
The Goldbrick Court of Appeals
The Neanderthal’s Nightmare
The Vestal Ex-Girlfriends
The Tomb of the Unknown Talk Show Host
The Ark of the Half-Mumbled Suggestion That We Should Meet up Sometime
The Unicorn’s Alibi
The Solemn Oath of Temporary Employment, sworn upon a manila envelope of blank printer paper
Handtowel contracts signed in smeared makeup
Knots in milk
The good work of pollution
The heartfelt prayer for Continued Leeway
And the unending beep programmed
into the irrecoverable word
to remind
The Survivor’s Half-Meant Lament
Horizon-annihilating
the wave trembled
Dazzled baffled beyond repair—
Repair in the sense of returning to an earlier
already-disproven safety—overshadowed
and wet already, the man on its beach tiptoed
to his motel room, through the trapdoor in his wallet
to secure some small sleep from a seeing
that even clenched eyes didn’t dim
His secret name washed out like a road
What he meant to die for or just remember
shrank to a bobbing speck in a crowded sea
The music stopped and every rampart
was landmarked by forces more tedious
than anyone can be passionate
Fears concresce desires specify gods withdraw
guesses carom if there ever was a secret name
if there was an actual core to reach for
if the etiquette of mortality was eerily indulgent up to a point
only to stiffen at the brink of a real breach
The situation in and out
normalizes according to the latest lazy witchcraft
exhaled from the vents of late-model cars
or burbled from the lips of the beautiful
The sunrise tints the sky
with the dingy tincture of failure and relief
that every survivor knows
Unreliable Testimony
Maybe he forced the issue
Maybe he used a little too much force
But his temperament is no accident
It may be the least accidental part of the story
If, as they say, visions come to the prepared soul
that night proved how unprepared he was
The mystic and the bruised woman talking to the cops
often offer the same testimony:
True love sometimes looks
like anything but
Peculiar Mirrors
The city is our destination, where entangled
between smaller destinations, we may feign stillness
We are all together here on the sidewalk
of the Via Roma Libere, but not utterly
We are at our childhood and near
to what we hope to recover from it
Our restless hands are more illusory than our minds
We can not hold on to any thing
A lion roars,
a shield of mirror in its mouth
Outside the cathedral the man imagines patrimony
and the woman imagines weddings
A Japanese woman charges past yelling Toilet! Toilet!
declaring a life without interruptions to be no life at all
We are like those ancient obscure statues
with a face for each direction
This fitful endeavor that animates and thwarts us
can never overcome us completely
Not on the sidewalk
where peculiar mirrors abound
 |
| "Heart Light" Photograph by Bert Happel |
Rogues’ Gallery
Milk knotted to cheese, cheese folded to flesh
flesh staring out its own barred windows
bargaining with the rogues’ gallery
of things I need to think
just to think at all
The Misunderstanding Hall of Fame
The Marketers’ Valhalla
The Goldbrick Court of Appeals
The Neanderthal’s Nightmare
The Vestal Ex-Girlfriends
The Tomb of the Unknown Talk Show Host
The Ark of the Half-Mumbled Suggestion That We Should Meet up Sometime
The Unicorn’s Alibi
The Solemn Oath of Temporary Employment, sworn upon a manila envelope of blank printer paper
Handtowel contracts signed in smeared makeup
Knots in milk
The good work of pollution
The heartfelt prayer for Continued Leeway
And the unending beep programmed
into the irrecoverable word
to remind
The Survivor’s Half-Meant Lament
Horizon-annihilating
the wave trembled
Dazzled baffled beyond repair—
Repair in the sense of returning to an earlier
already-disproven safety—overshadowed
and wet already, the man on its beach tiptoed
to his motel room, through the trapdoor in his wallet
to secure some small sleep from a seeing
that even clenched eyes didn’t dim
His secret name washed out like a road
What he meant to die for or just remember
shrank to a bobbing speck in a crowded sea
The music stopped and every rampart
was landmarked by forces more tedious
than anyone can be passionate
Fears concresce desires specify gods withdraw
guesses carom if there ever was a secret name
if there was an actual core to reach for
if the etiquette of mortality was eerily indulgent up to a point
only to stiffen at the brink of a real breach
The situation in and out
normalizes according to the latest lazy witchcraft
exhaled from the vents of late-model cars
or burbled from the lips of the beautiful
The sunrise tints the sky
with the dingy tincture of failure and relief
that every survivor knows
Unreliable Testimony
Maybe he forced the issue
Maybe he used a little too much force
But his temperament is no accident
It may be the least accidental part of the story
If, as they say, visions come to the prepared soul
that night proved how unprepared he was
The mystic and the bruised woman talking to the cops
often offer the same testimony:
True love sometimes looks
like anything but
Peculiar Mirrors
The city is our destination, where entangled
between smaller destinations, we may feign stillness
We are all together here on the sidewalk
of the Via Roma Libere, but not utterly
We are at our childhood and near
to what we hope to recover from it
Our restless hands are more illusory than our minds
We can not hold on to any thing
A lion roars,
a shield of mirror in its mouth
Outside the cathedral the man imagines patrimony
and the woman imagines weddings
A Japanese woman charges past yelling Toilet! Toilet!
declaring a life without interruptions to be no life at all
We are like those ancient obscure statues
with a face for each direction
This fitful endeavor that animates and thwarts us
can never overcome us completely
Not on the sidewalk
where peculiar mirrors abound
~Colin Dodds
