Robert Dawson

Hepatitis

Flat on my back, a foot-square paperback
of The New Golden Bough propped
...

Catfish

Where can I bury the gills
and guts of all the fish I caught
...

SHELLEY

His arms St. Andrew's cross flat on his chest,
helpless while Leman's beer froth whitecaps clapped
...

TARZAN

Of hartebeast, waterbuck,
wildebeast, the nuzzle-nuzzle
...

FORT HILL

Dogs
mammaldom's Boston Irish
...

ANNE SEXTON

MUSIC SWIMS BACK TO ME
...

During the War

My age during the war, my old man had a pin-
pricked ear. His war effort was hauling loads
...

CAR HOUSE

When mother's '40 Nash gave up the ghost
father stalled it in the dunes outside the court
...

BIBLE CAMP

1. January, Caracalla's Baths were bare
as grocery crates. The codger
...

SKIPPING STONES ON THE AEGEAN

So culture bound I get a hard-on
thinking of classical nudity
...

Giacomo Leopardi
THE INFINITE

Dear to me always is this lonely hill
...

Driving to Florida

One of those mornings when even a piss was cold
glazing yellow the outhouse hole,
...

Animal Burial

Hugging his shoulders the half-year's husband doesn't make
a face of what he hears. "You cried
...

The Troll at the Toll

1. 'And if it wasn't 35 in '52,
Old whipper-snapper, you
...

Looking German

Walking and walking on classical soil,
I feel like Goethe,
...

Bobby Dawson's Descent into Los Angeles
with Mr Light Burden and Mr Smooth Promise

That boy's-book Pilgrim's Progress,
...

Stalking


Sorghum on its scaly stalk, green, yellow,
...

Vladimir Mayakovsky
A SONG FOR HIMSELF,
THE BELOVED AUTHOR SINGS
...

Rafters

Hauling rafters out of Mason City
across Dakotas when no roads
...