Four Poems

by Keith Dodson

Father’s Day

My father put up

with a lot.

He married my mom

then had

to live with her.

Whatever dreams

he had

as a man

taken by a manipulating

woman

who knew what

she wanted

and demanded

it delivered

only to learn

she snagged

the wrong guy

making it clear

she wished she’d

married her sister’s

husband

who did everything

right.

I have dad’s humor

his record of divorce,

his work ethic,

his face,

and my mom’s

psychosis. He

stuck it out for

two kids

and seventeen years

before marrying

his office assistant.

Mom married

her divorced pastor

who, after counseling

her for years, quickly learned

after the “I Dos,”

who mom

truly was.

Finding God

Found my dad’s

Playboy magazines

by accident

when I was ten.

I was looking

for polish and buff brush

to shine my shoes

before church

and

came across

tits and ass

instead.

Golden Years

Anger woke me up--

alcohol passed me out.

Between

the extremes

I worked to fund

pursuit of older

divorced women with kids.

They didn’t expect much,

were always thankful

for what they got and,

knew instinctively

I wasn’t

a long-term thing.

One Week

It only took one week,

a couple hours a day,

to shred ten years of life

wrapped within forty

college-ruled

notebooks,

100 pages each,

both sides

covered

in a screed

of blood drawn

from raw bone.

How many trees died?

How many lumberjacks lived

to carry, catalog

and contain

the three thousand

six hundred forty

day journey from whom

I never was to someone

with hope

to become.

BIO: Back in the day, Keith A. Dodson’s poems appeared in such zines as: Abbey, Asylum, Bogg, Catalyst, Chiron Review, Impetus, Lactuca, Pearl, Poetry Motel, Quick Brown Fox, Samisdat, and Slipstream. Recent poems have appeared, or will soon appear, in Beatnik Cowboy, Ink Nest, Mocking Owl Roost, and Prudence Dispatch. Keith lives in Graham, North Carolina, and contemplates retirement between poetic spasms.