William F Dougherty Poems

(Sonnet as Keynote to WS)

The stout man puffs on his Havana cigar
And picks canary chords on his blue guitar,
...

(For Cynthia Ann Dougherty)

Towing your tattered doll,
you would fetch your storybook
...

[from the Crab Sonnets]

They sank a silver zipper in my chest:
a foot of snag-toothed staples used to chain
...

A soldier's curse is not the copper pay,
stationed here in this gods-forsaken place!
I'd bribe a centurion to leave today.
...

The archived rite returns in gothic gray:
a bruise-dark sky, a blunt and tugging rain,
a sheen of black umbrellas, spaded clay.
The camera obscura, mind, ingrains
...

The unction cools my brow; the candle shines
and braids a line of sacramental brede;
the priest half-chants the text, and makes the signs,
jogging my mind with the redemptive creed
...

I slouch into my class, bowed by the brute,
apocalyptic shock. No student's eyes
forsake the glowing screen; the sound is mute.
Their center, Yeats's vatic lines forewarn, flies
...

Words are for those with promises to keep. — W.H. Auden

I promised her the garden's glory:
marigold's monarchal blooms,
...

The mole catacombed under dripping roots,
gnawing grubs like clustered shrimp, pulpy white
dangling in gloom. In the oak, patient hoots
...

The parking lot is full, but not for me-
Churchgoing first, and then visiting day.
Perhaps a glove is lost, perhaps a key:
Something, some other annulling delay,
...