Poetry By James Dickson

       andreashallgren CC



Safety Drill, 2022


Children, 

Please gather your bodies
against the interior wall, 
out of view of the window, 
but spread yourselves six feet

apart to give room for the .223
shells to pass safely by.  Don’t breathe
in a virus, don’t breathe
loudly, don’t breathe.

Pray breathlessly while I turn off
the lights and wedge the door tight
to keep viral loads contained. 
I will sanitize the desks 

of violence and wash hands 
of policymakers while my own
chafe from exposure.  
When the intercom crackles 

All Clear I will light my candle
to Saint Jude—but imagine he’s 
actually Walt Whitman—and usher
you back to your tidy rows so that

I may prepare you for the next 
calamity to manifest itself.  So that 
you may avoid bullets and pathogens
without moving from your cold plastic seats. 





Learning to Shut Up

When a student tells me about
past trauma, of course my advice
​
is to write a poem.  No, firmly. 
I don’t write about him.  

Nor should she, I realize.  Why
revisit her uncle’s beery breath, 

his hands, her 10-year-old body. 
Poems can shape chaos, but quiet

can too.  Not a gagged silence, 
not the silence of whispered

threats, but the hushed
release of a river birch’s

saw-toothed leaves, the 
sibilant peeling of its bark

to gather light through
a sun-starved winter.  





Reading Li Po in the Laundromat

is easily the most obnoxious thing
I did this weekend.  Oh, I bet
I’ll be the only one there reading
8th century Chinese poetry!
But I quickly realized the dickishness
of this thanks to the twin boys planted
on the floor playing with their Hot Wheels
while dad stuffed clothes into machines, 
measured Country Apple scented Gain, 
and doled out quarters.  Their collection 
was solid:  at least a dozen cars each, ranging
from classic Mustangs to futuristic 
ice cream trucks.  Revving and screeching
resonated from their mouths as their 
small Black hands drove their small die-cast
cars.  Outside, a biting January and a hostile
America.  But here, in the SuperSudz?  
They are gods moving their subjects
with no predestined narrative, just 
rolling and crashing and rhhhrrr
and skrrrt and bbshhhhhhh.  The rest 
of the universe has melted away like 
ketchup stains in the warm sudsy tumble
behind them.  Dad glances and grins 
as he moves two damp heaps into 
the dryer.  And I’m resisting the urge
to slide in a Li Po line here just to wink
at my own cleverness.  So, I’ll remember
the legend of his death:  the drunken 
poet fell from his boat as he tried
to embrace the moon and drowned.
Why would I want to follow his path
when I can tread on these smooth
linoleum roads, rolling freely, 
a gentle hand guiding me home? 

​

James Dickson teaches English and Creative Writing at Germantown High School, just outside of Jackson, MS. An MFA graduate from the Bennington Writing Seminars, he is the recipient of Mississippi Arts Commission fellowships, was named High School Literary Magazine Advisor of the Year by the Mississippi Scholastic Press Association, and was invited to speak at the National Educators Association 50th anniversary celebration “The Promise of Public Education.” His poems, book reviews, and essays appear in The Common, Ruminate, Hospital Drive, The Louisiana Review, Spillway, Slant, Poetry Quarterly, McSweeney’s, Sylvia, and his first collection, Some Sweet Vandal, was published by Kelsay Books this May.  He lives in Jackson with his wife, their son, and a small menagerie of animals.  

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