Poems by Sean Thomas Dougherty
American Sonnet #1
for my language this nostalgia
meaning no one has lost count
but the jury in a shoulder harness,
in the darkness of three suitsour parents driven from this house,
the promises The Shining echobefore speeches on a distant station
the clatter of a copter's bladesthe riot let burn that witness leaving
every single wall our childrencartwheel into sequined sundials.
Mythologies of ceaseless roaches:the wealthy gazing down like vul-
tures guarding a shrine of bread.
American Sonnet on a Cardboard Fruit BoxCampesina this box is labled, a for moving box
of bananas box, pineapples, mangoes
box of Argentina, El Salvador, box
of Guatemala, Nicaragua, Brazil, a box
of Brazil, Ecuadorian box, Peter's Groceries box
of Paraguay box, Uruguayan Chili box, Neruda
box like Joseph Cornell's boxes of
lost things, found things: fingers, hands, limbs,
nails, necks, a box for moving
books, Campesina box, a box for
revolutions box, solutions box, evolutions a box
to store a biography of Che', a box of Coup de Tete
for leaving nada ninguno but the dead, an empty box
stamped
peasant, woman, worker, a box to fill Gringo: a box
for
you.
Triolet of the Working PoorThe dying drink without a tune.
Others nod their heads. Some scream.
My brother lit a match beneath a spoon.
The dying drink without a tune.
And my father-- shook down by his gloom?
Nothing more or less. No screams.
The dying drink without a tune.
Others nod their heads. Some dream.
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Contents copyright © 2002 by Sean Thomas Dougherty.
Format copyright © 2002 by Cultural Logic, ISSN 1097-3087, Volume 4, Number 2, Spring 2001.