by Colin Dodds

No more docks, no more mills.
He walks the landmark blocks
trying to name the sad old bug
so deep up his ass.

On the dark river, the lit tug boats
really could be birthday cakes.
Up by the light and the people,
he buys a newspaper.

But the news is all bad.
Somewhere along the line,
the kings and queens of the Earth,
got it into their sweet little heads
to degrade themselves beyond salvage.
And that’s just the entertainment section.

The rest of the paper says there’s
nothing to look forward to and nothing to dread—
two thousand more years
of the blind girl getting raped on the subway.

From the sidewalk, he calls a childhood friend
to ask what it’s like to not be a sociopath.
But Spill-O gets the answering machine,
which regards him as something less than a stranger.

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Colin Dodds grew up in Massachusetts and completed his education in New York City. He’s 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.” Dodds’ screenplay, Refreshment, was named a semi-finalist in the 2010 American Zoetrope Contest. His poetry has appeared in more than a hundred forty 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.” Colin lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife Samantha. You can find more of his work at thecolindodds.com.