Roger Dunsmore - Greatest Hits 1969 - 2006
This is an invitational, retrospective volume of twelve poems from forty years of writing, plus author's Introduction.
BAD BEHAVIOR Then there's that story about Coyote losing his ass. You know, the one where he finds himself imprisoned inside a hollow tree for stealing from his in-laws. The only way he can figure to escape is to take himself apart and push each piece out through a knothole. When he gets all of himself outside he puts himself back together again, piece by piece, and takes off. But a little ways down the road he discovers that he's lost his ass, must've misplaced it, left it out when he put himself back together. So he makes a new one out of pitch or a pinecone or something, but it doesn't work very well. It leaks. His insides won't stay inside. And it itches. There's more to the story for sure, but young people always ask, what does it mean this part about Coyote losing his ass? If you haven't lost your ass, a time or two, I tell them, you're probably not worth a damn: remembering that young woman in the bright red coat with laughing eyes and my wife trying to run me down with the truck, and the house and twenty acres that went with her.