Philip Wilson
Dorothy Day, New York Anarchist
‘She’s putting a sticking plaster on a cancerous world’.
Harsh, but surely true. Dorothy was making a mistake.
Helping New York homeless didn’t stop famines in Africa,
doling out soup to the dole queue never fixed VD in Lima.
And burning draft cards didn’t help children covered in napalm.
(The cards tumbled over in the flames, catching and losing fire,
crinkling and charcoaling, finally dissolving,
heretics in the pure, the cleansing fire.)
She should have stayed on the beach, saint in a swimsuit,
stayed with her lover, brought up her daughter in peace.
She should have stayed in Greenwich Village bars reading Augustine
and Proudhon
and left the poor and the dying, and left the world alone.
So if her name is up there to be confused with Doris Day or even
Dorothy Squires
it’s a mistake. Picture it: the patient gasping in agony,
retching as poison finally and fatally floods the system,
And here’s Dorothy with her sticking plaster. ‘A woman gone wrong!’
Except that the last man, frost on his jacket thawing,
a hot spoon burning his freezing fingers, felt in his pocket,
twirled the burning draft card as it flamed in its logic,
held its throes tight, took its fierce beauty to heart.
Page(s) 65
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The