Colin Dodds
Young Child at an Old Holiday
I hear the seasons change
in the songs my daughter sings
She learns the old carols
as her grandfarther forgets them
In the middle, I carry a tune
I know grudgingly and well
The Court of Gulls
For now,
though, we have time
and room to speak the truth,
just not in gold
Rather, the halting script
ballpoint pen makes
on a nylon backpack,
or the ever-reconsidered stroll
of a gull
Greeting Card Dialogue
Forty-one years
You
only fall an inch
But you don’t
ever get it back
So don’t
happy birthday
me
)(
Rise and shine
Suffer and falter, fail
and die
But the darkness
won’t ever get that inch
back
The Men Gathered
Sleepy fathers wallet-worn
in an ageless emergency
lug no-one-knows bread ends of conversation
to the bartendrix and gather as around
the half-domesticated fire
to once more burn down the world
without letting on
Prayer from Sunny’s
The way it goes day to day,
I don’t know
whether to fill my hours with prayer
or just take a fucking pass
But I was not wrong
to offer a prayer for this bar
where time slows, orthodoxy softens
and the notion of humanity
might recuperate
A prayer to negligence and inefficiency:
May joggers reek of the cigarettes
in their unacknowledged dreams
May the wealthy speak in the accents
of the first mouths they kissed
And let us all be so drunk
that the woozy sea, meandering
back to itself, might
hiccup with envy
BIO
Colin Dodds is a writer with several novels and books of poetry to his name. He grew up in Massachusetts and lived in California briefly, before finishing his education in New York City. Since then, he’s made his living as a journalist, editor, copywriter and video producer. Over the last seven years, his writing has appeared in more than three hundred publications including Gothamist, Painted Bride Quarterly, and The Washington Post. His poetry collection Spokes of an Uneven Wheel was published by Main Street Rag Publishing Company in 2018. And his novel, Vice Nimrod, Communications, was longlisted for the 2019 Beverly Prize. Colin also writes screenplays, has directed a short film, and built a twelve-foot-high pyramid out of PVC pipe, plywood and zip ties. One time, he rode his bicycle a hundred miles in a day. He lives in New York City, with his wife and daughter. You can find more of his work atthecolindodds.com.