Alan Dugan Poems

The river brought down
dead horses, dead men
and military debris,
indicative of war
...

Who knows whether the sea heals or corrodes?
The wading, wintered pack-beasts of the feet
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Speciously individual
like a solid piece of spit
floating in a cuspidor
I dream of free bravery
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“If you work a body of water and a body of woman
you can take fish out of one and children out of the other
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The old wound in my ass
has opened up again, but I
...

I live inside of a machine
or machines. Every time one
goes off another starts. Why
don’t I go outside and sleep
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The first and last time I met
my ex-lover Anne Sexton was at
a protest poetry reading against
some anti-constitutional war in Asia
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God, I need a job because I need money.
Here the world is, enjoyable with whiskey,
women, ultimate weapons, and class!
...

My mother never heard of Freud
and she decided as a little girl
that she would call her husband Dick
no matter what his first name was
...