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photo by Liselotte Brunner/Pixabay
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Thank You Dogs that Started Barking on New Year’s Eve
Thank you dogs that started barking
who made me turn the jazz up on New Year’s Eve
loud
loud
loud
so mutilated America would hear what horns are supposed to sound like
in fourteen hundred and ninety-two Columbus crossed the ocean blue
without horns
that was his first mistake
and thank you fireworks
thank you noise makers and plastic bits
thank you rifles shot in the air
thank you small arms and shotguns
thank you celebratory bullets
thank you wars that make me forget other wars
thank you dogs that started barking on New Year’s Eve
thank you complaining neighbors
did you know Elvis was arrested for skinny dipping
in Lake Mead
while filming Viva Las Vegas?
he was loud and drunk as a polecat
I read about it in the “National Enquirer”
thus
did America end in 1963
with a film that was pretty good
but not worth saving
thank you Ann Margaret
don’t blame her
and don’t blame Dizzy Gillespie
and don’t blame the dogs that started barking on New Year’s Eve
don’t blame Elvis
blame me
I was born here
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John Stupp’s third poetry collection Pawleys Island was published in 2017. His manuscript Summer Job won the 2017 Cathy Smith Bowers Poetry Prize and was published in August 2018. A chapbook entitled When Billy Conn Fought Fritzie Zivic was published by Red Flag Poetry in January, 2020. (From 1975-1985 he worked professionally as a mediocre jazz guitarist). He lives near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and can be reached via email at [email protected].
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Listen to a 1957 performance of Dizzy Gillespie playing “Dizzy Atmosphere,” with Stan Getz (tenor sax), Paul Gonsalves (tenor sax), Coleman Hawkins (tenor sax), Wynton Kelly (piano), Wendell Marshall (bass), and J.C. Heard (drums)
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