a poem for my uncles colostomy bag.

when we were little he told us it was a sword. And in our

half basement, we believed the pirate of him. The one

who manned the cannon;

took maidens in their sleep. And why not

believe that the twitch is the secret

gold kept tight?

I look out into my unworked garden,

there amongst last seasons collard stalks,

de-leafed and bowed like the spine of a

hunchback, there are nice places

with palaces and with clean

rooms who's glass ashtrays

never fill with the half buts of

Chesterfield Kings. And later on

i'll tell you how a human being gets

anywhere on earth. People migrate

from Georgia or the Delta

without their guitars,

without their blues songs but

knowing the omphalos of

Charlie Patton, the rhythm tapped out

on the bare floors of double decker trains

going north to the primordial ooze of

a living wage.  And if the stink

of skin and stale chicken don't kill you,

no doubt, the future of

other human contraptions

will.

Reviews

[Ken Simm.]

Would you understand Dana? If I said that this is the antithesis of romance but it could not be that unless it had romance in it. The job of true poets such as yourself is to educate and go beyond. Your memory poems about the small things give this such romance. You find the beauty of your life and you communicate this in ways that celebrate that beauty. Ways that ordinary mortals such as me could not concieve of. I am amazed.

[h d e rushin]

thanks Ken......but you are certainly no ordinary mortal...dana.

[Cory Barrett]

good grief dana you can write

[h d e rushin]

thanks cory.....so can you....in fact, we all can.....lol....dana

[Cory Barrett]

touche................................

[Delmar Cooper]

Well said, anything that doesn’t kill us makes us so pissed off as to be dangerous.

[h d e rushin]

I think my Grandma use to tell me that Delmar.....dana

[W.k.kortas]

Firstly, let me note that this is the most dana rushin title ever. That bit of silliness being out of the way, this is also very much the Platonic image of your work, what you do in its purest form; there are the images that are very intensely personal--pirates of the basement, the garden, someone toe-tapping on a train, but intertwined with it is the story of a generation that left "Georgia or the Delta" for the Hamtramcks and Garys and Flints. Sometimes, a poet can simply try too hard to create breadth and sweep in their poetry, and that is generally quite trasnparent and leads to nothing but dry polemics (I'm sure the learned gentlemen who visited this page before me can cite numerous examples), but this makes no such attempt, or at the very least it is certainly not apparent, and as such the piece is big as a house, big as the whole damn universe.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

yes, kids have such imaginations and adults get to play on those imaginations...for the most mundane, yuckky things, they can play on that and make up stories the kids will revel in...

the last four lines are exceptional...the analogy....when we grow up and start getting older, we know we will be capable of being in the similar situation...and we will have to make up fairy tales too.

[h d e rushin]

so true Jacob....