Who Was That Glum Passer-by?

A toddler with a gun--
The toddler is forty-seven
and weighs 200 pounds--
He's a software engineer,
he's unemployed,
he works at Walmart.

As you might have supposed,
he likes hamburgers, pizza, beer--
Surprise, the toddler also eats
broccoli, kumquats, quinoa
and kale; he listens to rap,

Andrea Bocelli, bluegrass, and Bach--
I remember how he used to scream
right in the middle of Woolworth's--
My doctor told me to ignore him--
I ignored him for twenty-six years.

You better not cut him off
on the highway;
you better not call him a cracker,
you better not call him a thug--
One of them hated my brother for a few seconds;
that was enough.

You're so unlike them,
you work hard and vote.
Your loves are freedom,
money, vermillion lips,
and, of course, guns.  You imagine
you're safe as the toddler
you were, and still are.



Thomas Dorsett
first published in
The Texas Review
Spring/Summer 2015

The Ginkgoes on Main Street

The revolution of trees
wasn't started by minds organizing
common things in God's obscure garage.

Chaos-fathered, here they are
on a strip of dirt in the center of town
without demands for a brook or a forest.

Drizzle from a mongrel's kidneys cannot keep them down;
they'll grow beside trash if they must;
I meet a gnarled survivor with canary hair.

It's only April so I guess she's dying
but she wasn't desperate--I leaned on her
and told her of troubles ginkgoes never have--

It's now two seconds before midnight
on a day that began with nuclear fusion
four and half billion years ago Thursday.

Her kinfolk have lived here for eons;
mine for two million tough years at best.
How long will it last?  Buddy,

my dog, sniffs a toy poodle walked
by a woman with lemony hair;
all it takes is one whiff and we're gone.


Thomas Dorsett

This poem first appeared in
The Texas Review
Spring/summer 2015