Poetry: Selections from John Dorsey

Black Snake Moan

(for jason ryberg)

 

on a hot summer day

your heart becomes a 7 ft black snake

that you drag

a mile up

winding country road

 

in a world

where the element of surprise

is nearly gone

your past steps out from behind a tree

 

a little boy in a kansas field

with dirt smudges on his face appears

wild & free

his smile

nearly swallowing

both of us

whole.

What You Thought was Steely Dan

was just an army of cicadas

rising from the dead

straight out of your high school yearbook

full of fast girls with toothy grins

your hair slicked back

its virtues parted down the center

of the red sea of the south

as bluebirds of wisdom flew away.

Conjuring GG Allin from Beyond the Grave

(for john clayton)

 

if gg allin googled himself

he wouldn’t like what he found either

 

overdose doesn’t rhyme with anything

suicide is a beautiful rose

planted in broken glass

that the young always remember.

John Dorsey lived for several years in Toledo, Ohio. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Teaching the Dead to Sing: The Outlaw's Prayer (Rose of Sharon Press, 2006), Sodomy is a City in New Jersey (American Mettle Books, 2010), Tombstone Factory, (Epic Rites Press, 2013), Appalachian Frankenstein (GTK Press, 2015) Being the Fire(Tangerine Press, 2016) and Shoot the Messenger (Red Flag Poetry, 2017), Your Daughter's Country (Blue Horse Press, 2019), Which Way to the River: Selected Poems 2016-2020 (OAC Books, 2020), Afterlife Karaoke (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2021) and Sundown at the Redneck Carnival, (Spartan Press, 2022). His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, the Stanley Hanks Memorial Poetry Prize, and he is the winner of the 2019 Terri Award given out at the Poetry Rendezvous.