Tony Dawson – Cajun Mutt Press

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 09/20/23

September 21, 2023 James D. Casey IV

Foreboding

I had been waiting for ages
under a stuttering streetlight,
when a figure emerged
from the shadows and said,
“What are you waiting for?”
“I’m not sure but I feel I have to.”
“Are you expecting someone, then?”
“Well, yes. Or maybe some thing.
The longer I wait, the more anxious
it makes me. It’s extremely unnerving.
Does everybody react like this?”
“Some do, but as far as I know
most don’t bother to think about it.”
“I keep looking over my shoulder,
which makes me even more uneasy.
I have such a sense of foreboding…”
“Relax. It seems like your wait is over.
Let’s walk to the end of the road.”
“So, you were the one I was waiting for.”
“Now that it’s dawned on you,
it’s too late. Your fate is sealed.”

Tony Dawson has lived in Seville since 1989. His writing has appeared in print in Critical Survey, Shoestring Press, Poems-for-All, Chiron Review, Pure Slush, and Otherwise Engaged Literary Journal as well as online at Loch Raven Review, London Grip, The Five-Two, The Syndic Literary Journal, Horror Sleaze and Trash, Cajun Mutt Press, Poetry and Covid, Beatnik Cowboy, Retreats from Oblivion, and Home Planet News. He has published a collection, Afterthoughts, reviewed here:
https://londongrip.co.uk/2023/06/london-grip-poetry-review-tony-dawson/

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 01/25/23

January 25, 2023 James D. Casey IV

Dendrophilia

“In her spare time she spends time with trees.”
Thus spake a poet in all her pastoral seriousness…
leaving me to wonder what she does with them.
Does she carve her initials in their bark
together with those of her significant other?
Does she tie a yellow ribbon round them all?
If she talks to them, how do they respond?
Is it possible she can’t see the wood for them?
Does she hug and comfort them for being rooted
and rising up, like a practicing paraphilic would
and simply pines for trees? She could even be
channelling Marvin Gaye’s sexual healing
when she finds herself amongst the trees.
Maybe she goes there on the lookout for a ‘woody’
though I doubt she’d risk a splinter. How could she?
Or does she regard a tree when she’s up real close
as an enormous supply of cellulose, future paper
on which to write her heartfelt odes, even though
among the trees it would be kinder to log into her laptop?
It’s possible she wonders at the lifespan of each tree,
and thinks about the myths of Myrrha and Daphne.

Tony Dawson has lived in Seville since 1989. He has published in Critical Survey, Shoestring Press, online at London Grip, The Five-Two, The Syndic Literary Journal, Poems for All, Poetry and Covid, Cajun Mutt Press, and Home Planet News. A short story was published in Chiron Review, summer 2021.

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 10/10/22

October 10, 2022 James D. Casey IV

Graffiti: Wall to Wall Wisdom

Poetry is eternal graffiti written
in the heart of everyone,
Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Skins Rule, O.K.?
Lunacy drools, O.K.?
Dyslexia lures, K.O.?
Heisenberg’s Uncertainty
Principle Rules perhaps, O.K.?
Absolute Zero Rules, O.K.?
French Fishers Rule, Au Quai?
Moby Dick is not a disease.
You are what you eat.
“I’ve just eaten Einstein”
said the cannibal,
“making me a genius, O.K.?”
Paul Foot, a legend in his own time.

Tony Dawson, OK?

Tony Dawson has lived in Seville since 1989. He has published in Critical Survey, Shoestring Press, online at London Grip, The Five-Two, The Syndic Literary Journal, Poems for All, Poetry and Covid, Cajun Mutt Press, and Home Planet News. A short story was published in Chiron Review, summer 2021.

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 08/22/22

August 22, 2022 James D. Casey IV

Solidarity

Sitting in the doorway of a dilapidated library
wrapped in blankets, morning, noon, and night,
quietly reading books or offering some rosemary,
two men, in solidarity, coping with their plight:
friends who’ve spent long years surviving on the street.
Two homeless men both holding out their palms
like yogis meditating, hoping for a treat?
Or a bite to eat? No … Just brothers in alms.

Tony Dawson has lived in Seville since 1989. He has published in Critical Survey, Shoestring Press, online at London Grip, The Five-Two, The Syndic Literary Journal, Poems for All, Poetry and Covid, Cajun Mutt Press and Home Planet News. A short story was published in Chiron Review, summer 2021.

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 03/09/22

March 9, 2022 James D. Casey IV

Street Woes

On a busy street
in the centre of Seville
a fairytale crone,
clad in black
from head to toe,
leaning on a walking frame,
holds out her hand.
Like the melting
Witch of the West
in the Wizard of Oz,
and just as tiny,
she’s lost her magic.
Shoppers pass by
as if she’s not there.

On another street
a homeless man
sits hunched in shadow
by the church
of Omnium Sanctorum,
a gargoyle fallen
from his perch
on the cornice.
The boxer dog,
asleep beside him,
seems just as spent,
and rather thin,
a toothless threat.
The man’s eyes are dead,
looking straight ahead
but seeing nothing.

In the alley called
Loves’ Passageway,
which meets the street
named Bitterness—
what sardonic medieval
wit named these streets? —
another man sleeps
on a foam rubber bed
under a filthy blanket
inside a cardboard box.
Passers-by give him
a wide berth.

Tony Dawson has lived in Seville since 1989 having had a career in higher education both in the UK and Spain. Some published poems in English include Lithuanian Cat’s Cradle in Critical Survey, Embers by Shoestring Press, Chance Encounter at the londongrip.co.uk, Attempted Suicide at The Five-Two, Pandemonium, The Dead of Nightand Maradona Meets His Maker in the Syndic Literary Journal. Bitte Experience (prose) appeared in the summer 2021 issue of Chiron Review. Sex Drive and App for Ancient Swingers are due to be published in the November 2021 edition of Home Planet News.