Poetry by Dan Wilcox

Looking for Cougars

is not what someone at my age usually does

& they do not have me on their kill lists.

But Youth is cruel, not even leftovers on the bar.

So I wait, like a house cat in the woods

looking for signs of fatigue, slurred speech

desperation in their eyes blurring the distance.

It is not an easy kill, which of us will taste death first?

She will sleep unbathed, my whiskey breath on her nipples.

In the morning the plains will be dry & empty.

What Really Happened

was that it was nurses, doctors, civil
engineers, & soldiers in clown suits
who invaded Afghanistan in October, 2001.


The children laughed, thought that
Americans were really funny & liked them.


Their parents found work building roads
& schools & water treatment plants.


They even got TVs & small refrigerators &
the electricity stayed on all day & night too.


What really happened was that when
the dusty men from caves with Kalashnikovs
told them Americans were evil & wanted
to kill them everyone laughed & no one
wanted to be a suicide bomber.

Letter To A Friend

After coffee & our morning together
I drove up the Avenue, Autumn
wind stripping trees, tossing red, gold
leaves through the open window of my car.


You worried about returning to the city
of lost love, afraid yet facing that coast
that time as half your life grows cold.


We sell our souls to wives, to husbands
we bend knees to the grind
spread legs for cars, homes
buy time on the hidden end
late night version of the short night
the days flicker in fantasy over
memos written in desperate code.


Who are these people we pretend to be?


So when I watched you walk away
it is like the leaves blowing
across my windshield, red, gold
& gone, nothing to hold to, until Spring.

The Birds’ Poem of Thanks

My birds are thankful they are small
if they could know such a thing, but
haven’t yet learned that when my
big hand reaches in the cage, it is
to take their food dish, give them more
or hang a sprig of millet, not grab
them, pinning their wings to their sides
dragging them out where they could
escape in a panic to unsought freedom.


This is the point in the poem where
a famous poet, like, you know…
would turn this to a metaphor, start
speaking to his or her lover or children
or the world at large, filled with meaning
my birds wouldn’t understand.