Tony Dawson was born in London in 1937 and has lived in Seville, Spain, since 1989. He came here to take up a minor post at Seville University for a year after taking early retirement from a Principal Lectureship in the UK. His contract in Seville was, however, renewed annually until he reached the age of 70 at which point, he finally did retire, but stayed on in the wonderful city of Seville. When it comes to writing, he is more of a dilettante than a dedicated exponent. For a start, he didn’t really apply himself (within the constraints of dilettantism) to writing verse until he was well into old age: just as the pandemic was beginning in 2019, as a way of maintaining his sanity, particularly during the lockdowns. It never occurred to him that anybody would want to publish anything that he wrote (he thought the 2013 publication was a fluke) and yet, so far, he has published over 70 poems in print and/or online, mostly in the USA. He has also had his fair share of rejections, of course. He has even managed to publish some work in Spanish online. He steers clear of social media.

If it is essential to know where he has published, the list is as follows:

His English poems have appeared in print in Critical Survey, Pure Slush, Shoestring Press, Otherwise Engaged Volume 10 Winter 2022, and Our Changing Earth Volume 1; and online at London Grip, The Five-Two, The Syndic Literary Journal, Beatnik Cowboy, Cajun Mutt Press, Horror Sleaze and Trash, Poetry and Covid, Home Planet News, North of Oxford, Retreats from Oblivion and Loch Raven Review. Poems are also forthcoming in the anthology Quilled Ink Review. His flash fiction has appeared in print in Chiron Review and Pure Slush and online at Literally Stories. Both genres, poetry and flash fiction, have also been published by Home Planet News in Spanish.

In a Rut

At dawn, a Yorkshire bar was emptying out.
Some boisterous young lads were laiking about, 
ogling and braying at provocative lasses 
prancing around and showing their asses.

In nearby woodland, fallow deer formed a lek,
a rutting display by young bucks at the beck 
and call of oestrous does that decided the fate
of each of the males as they selected a mate.

Out in the carpark, each of the lasses decided the fate
of each lad, driving off in a taxi with her chosen mate.

Each doe in the woodland paired off with a buck 
and after a brief chase was cornered and ... mounted.

Holy Man or Homeless Man?

We could see him in profile
as we walked along the street.
A baseball-capped holy man
was sitting in a doorway
on our route to the supermarket!
Bearded and hollow-cheeked,
gazing into an imagined distance,
he muttered a word or two
as we passed by with the trolley.
Was it a mantra? Or a blessing?

“What was that about peccadillos,”
I asked my wife as we walked on.
“I think he asked for a bocadillo”
she muttered, rolling her eyes.
So, not a holy man after all.
He was a homeless man
begging for food on the street.
I felt ashamed of myself.

On the way back, we stopped
at his niche on the step.
He sat motionless, his glassy
blue eyes staring straight ahead
as if in a trance, meditating. 
He said nothing. Perplexing.
Was he in fact a holy man?
Or was he simply ignoring me
as I’d appeared to ignore him?
No doubt I deserved his disdain.

We stood facing him. His gaze 
passed through us like a laser.
I held out some money for him
and it appeared an eternity
before he awoke from his trance
and realized I was offering help.
His grateful courtesy was touching.
There are so many like him in Seville.
Hope has drained from their faces
and the life from their eyes.

Lithuanian Cat’s Cradle

Cats are mysterious, or so people claim
and you were as exotic as they came.
Being a ‘Siamese’ pussy 
of Lithuanian extraction
certainly added to the attraction: 
isosceles face—high cheekbones, pointy chin—
arch smile; (I was now sucked in);
and eyes with mischievous epicanthic folds…
“Boxer’s eyes”, you called them.
They certainly knocked me cold!
And finally the frisson in your name, 
Nijole…

You had a way of sitting, legs crossed,
knees wide apart, provocatively
offering your love triangle to me—
a cat’s cradle for the lost.
And how you rocked me!
I could almost hear you purring
as my loins were stirring.
Yes, you were a real pussycat!

You had a dancer’s seductive grace, 
and when you sang: ‘The first time ever I saw your face…’
I was caught, snagged in your claws like a ball of wool.
Of course, you were making a fool
of me while I was giving you my trust.
I was being out-manoeuvred
as you hoovered
up my lust.

You were a feral lover,
a screamer, sublime.
I thought ‘our steps would always rhyme’
but you were a predator 
and when a likelier prey came on the scene
you spat me out, discarded and half-chewed,
then ‘devoured’ the terminally subdued
Dr Crisp.  You liked your men well done.