Dotty LeMieux – Writers Resist

Dotty LeMieux is the author of four chapbooks, Five Angels, Five Trees Press; Let Us Not Blame Foolish Women, Tombouctou Books; The Land, Smithereens Press, and most recently Henceforth I Ask Not Good Fortune, Finishing Line Press. A new chapbook is forthcoming from Main Street Rag, likely to appear in 2023. In the late 1970s to mid-1980s, she edited the eclectic literary and art journal Turkey Buzzard Review in the poetic haven of Bolinas, California. Her work has appeared in numerous print and online journals and anthologies, including Writers Resist. Dotty lives with her husband and two aging dogs in Northern California, where she practices environmental law and helps elect progressive candidates to office. You may read more at her blog.

The photograph, “Halloween at Gun World, Burbank,” is by Stephen Sossaman, a writer living in Burbank, California. His primary resistance work is within the peace movement.

A note from Writers Resist

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

Only the Meek

By Dotty LeMieux

Where are the birds of spring?

I see bees—are there enough?

Black carpenter ants—we never had them before—
emerge from some dusky damp place
beneath the foundation.

We live in a house of cards.

Even a bear takes exception
to exceptional times
and climbs a backyard tree
he must have crossed mountains
and dried up stream beds to reach.
I hope he got sustenance
out of the dogs’ bowl.

Every night, creatures mate or die
or wail their diminishment
in our backyard, alarming the dogs,
snug in cushioned beds.

Every morning the weather is our bearer of bad news:

Don’t put away the winter clothes
but don’t skimp
on the skimpy.

Gas, lumber, even food scarcer and more costly
because all are vulnerable now
as never before.

Or is just that we are now forced
to face it?

Now that I think of it, dogs
resemble domestic bears
who can’t climb trees.

Squirrels outwit us all.

The nighttime creatures burrow deep
into ground we have given up for dead.
Is this what they mean by the meek

shall inherit the earth?

So why do we still struggle:

to remain upright
to stretch toward breathable air
to stay alive long enough
to inherit what’s left?

Dotty LeMieux is the author of four chapbooks, Five Angels, Five Trees Press; Let Us Not Blame Foolish Women, Tombouctou Books; The Land, Smithereens Press, and most recently Henceforth I Ask Not Good Fortune, Finishing Line Press. In the late 1970s to mid-1980s, she edited the eclectic literary and art journal Turkey Buzzard Review in the poetic haven of Bolinas, California. Her work has appeared in numerous print and online journals and anthologies, including Writers Resist. Dotty lives in Northern California with her husband and two aging dogs, where she practices environmental law and helps elect progressive candidates to office. Read more at her blog.

Photo credit: Jerzy Durczak via a Creative Commons license.

A note from Writers Resist:

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

Solstice

By Dotty LeMieux

It’s delivery day at St. Vincent’s Dining Room
men unloading trucks with bread, canned goods, day-old
everything for the homeless
and the not-yet homeless
hanging on by the skin of their teeth,
the ones who have teeth
and the ones who only have the skin

Scruffy off-white hair,
long brown coat like a cape
swirling around bony shoulders,
gap-toothed smile, a man
picks bagels one, two, three
from a giant plastic bag open on the sidewalk

The sidewalk not crowded yet,
the bagel bag still fairly full,
the man in the brown cape-like garment
has his pick, takes his time choosing
plain, seeded, onion,
maybe a spicy cinnamon one
to summon the spirit of the Season

Face lit up with his choices, clutched
in his two hands as he starts across the street,
hair blowing around his face,
cape billowing out behind his slender frame,
he is transformed into a Romantic poet,

reciting odes
in a proper British accent,
to adoring listeners
gathered in the glittering firelight
of the local pub,
his hands gesturing freely,
accentuating the high points
of his lyricism

Back on B St., he strides in front of my car,
stopped now to let him pass, to watch
his coattails fly in his wake,
like autumn’s last leaves
swooshing around us, into the street, launched
by winter’s first insistent breath.

I live and work in California as a writer, lawyer and campaign consultant. Previously I worked as a journalist in Cambridge Massachusetts and was part of the Second Wave feminist movement before moving to California and attending law school.

My three chapbooks are Let Us not Blame Foolish Women, Tombouctou Books; The Land, Smithereens Press; Five Angels, Five Trees Press. My work has appeared in Painted Bride, Rise Up Review, Tuck, Hanging Loose, Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review (FLAR), and other journals. In the 1980s I edited The Turkey Buzzard Review in Bolinas, California.

In 2016, I served as a Bernie Sanders Delegate to the Democratic National Convention. I have studied with poets Edith Jenkins, Joanne Kyger and Thomas Centolella and at the New College of California Poetics Program. My own website of advice and sometimes recipes for aspiring candidates for office, is www.thecampaigncookbook.blogspot.com.

Photo by Matt Collamer on Unsplash.