The Dog Has No Answers
poems by
Greg Kosmicki
~68 pages, $14 (+ shipping)
Projected Release Date: July/August, 2024
An Advance Sale Discount price of $10 (+ shipping) is available HERE prior to press time. This price is not available anywhere else or by check. The check price is $14/book (which includes shipping & sales tax) and should be sent to: Main Street Rag, 4416 Shea Lane, Mint Hill, NC 28227.
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Greg Kosmicki has written fourteen other books and chapbooks of poetry besides The Dog Has No Answers. His poems have been published in literary journals, both print and online, since 1977. His fifth book, It’s As Good Here as it Gets Anywhere (2016, Logan House) was a 2017 Finalist for the High Plains Book Awards. He has been awarded two artist’s fellowships from the Nebraska Arts Council. Greg founded The Backwaters Press and managed it until 2017, when it became an imprint of The University of Nebraska Press. He and his wife, Debbie, are parents of three, grandparents of two.
The plainsong of Lorca with the quotidian Frank O’Hara, that’s THE DOG HAS NO ANSWERS by Greg Kosmicki. “My wife gets back/from her volunteer job/we kiss./How soft the flesh of her mouth.” “I Guess I was Grieving in My Own Way” is a subtle meditation on fascism that manages to find beauty instead. Everyday wonders–”time was chrome on our car” – console and find joy. ~ Terese Svoboda
Robert Bly once wrote an essay called “A Wrong Turning in American Poetry,” and sometimes I wonder if we can ever find the breadcrumbs left by Lorca, Patchen, Wright, and Merwin – back to the genuine. In a world where people lose their jobs for liking the wrong tweets, Greg Kosmicki has stayed free enough to sing the songs of the universe. This old dog refuses to learn new tricks, easy answers, and shortcuts. There are no insta-poems here, no poems that suck their way into Best Of anthologies. Instead, Kosmicki cries like a plane crash survivor, bays at the moon like a coyote, howls like a man in a world gone mad. – Tom C. Hunley, The Loneliest Whale in the World
Elegy, Sunday Morning
To the memory of James Schuyler
the way
the light entered
the front door
window it bounced
off the full
length mirror
on the foyer coat
closet door
to place
a strip of colors
across pages of Schuyler
that burned deep
purple to blue,
almost green,
yellow to orange
and red,
words
beneath
each page
emerging
like young trees
in morning mist
The Neighbor’s Dog Barking
lonely and frightened as ever,
singing the song of the universe
in dog language, the way
I would talk to you
if I were free enough
to say what’s on my mind,
to howl in the living room like a man
Cattle Sleep This Time of Night
A tiny flying creature fell into my whiskey glass
when I went to take a pee.
I see what it did to that little navigator
to soak in whiskey but I know
that doesn’t apply to me
exactly. Still, it makes me wonder.
A lot of stuff makes me wonder
but I’m not listing all of that here.
The only thing we can ask
of each other is that we
try to understand each other,
which seems to be a task
too difficult for everyone.
Friends, let’s try it,
before the end of the world
before my taxes go too high to pay
before my kids get too old to treat me right
before my grandkids get sick of me
before Walt Whitman comes back from the dead
before I get leukemia or Parkinson’s
before the planet burns up
before the Cubs win another series
before Vladimir Putin is elected President of the U.S.
I can still do the Mork from Ork
sign of peace with both hands,
that should count for something, I think.
I know all the words
to “America the Beautiful” and
“The Star-Spangled Banner”
at least the first verses.
Tell me all your troubles
I promise you I can lend
a sympathetic ear but I probably
won’t give you a dollar even if your
cardboard sign assures
Jesus loves me.
I can see out into the darkness
where cattle and flies
work toward world domination
though they have no idea they are.
I wonder when the cattle are going
to figure out it’s all a fix.
I think I’ll go out on the porch.
Join the coyotes to bay at the moon.
They had the right idea all along—
live free, hang with your family,
eat what you find, stay away
from humans, die where no one
can find out where your body lies.
Washing My Hands
Bill’s funeral yesterday, the 23rd.
Oldest cousin on my mother’s side.
Second of this generation to have died.
The soap just a shard,
lying in the dish like a little bird.
