Robert Dawson

PROSERPINA

Proserpina,
migratory seabird, child
...

CONFIDENCE MAN

His images: funnel
in damp sand, lamp
...

RANDOM ADDENDA
to the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
...

Hepatitis

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

FOR A FUNERAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Damn it, Science! You've failed us again!
I though you'd master everlasting life
...

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
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TARZAN

Of hartebeast, waterbuck,
wildebeast, the nuzzle-nuzzle
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ORIGINS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Little bird
speck of life
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FORT HILL

Dogs
mammaldom's Boston Irish
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ANNE SEXTON

MUSIC SWIMS BACK TO ME
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Rainer Maria Rilke
Duino Elegy V - Freely Rewritten in English

Picasso: Les Saltimbanques
...

A POSTCARD OF MT. MCKINLEY

Nothing like a cheery night
in bed with the hand...
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During the War

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

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

1. January, Caracalla's Baths were bare
as grocery crates. The codger
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SKIPPING STONES ON THE AEGEAN

So culture bound I get a hard-on
thinking of classical nudity
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Giacomo Leopardi
THE INFINITE

Dear to me always is this lonely hill
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Rafters

Hauling rafters out of Mason City
across Dakotas when no roads
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THE PIGEON ROOF
The speaker is a high school student in California.

Of Science: The flapping flight of birds
...