The Dogs of Paris
Steven Gulvezan
A Tooth for Shane MacGowan
His gums bled sorrow that night
A bit unsteady
Sunglasses
Cigarette up and down
Big orange drink
Placed carefully on a stool
He confronted the microphone
“When I first came to London I was only sixteen…”
The boozy beery crowd of soul searchers
Hungry for something
A young woman opened on violin
Short skirt
Long legs
Supple
The way she became one
With her instrument
Black suit stained with unknown
Excrement he tightened erect
The pulse of the music and the
Push of so many bodies thrust
Him back to the city the streets
Grey smoke swirling street lights
Dirty yellow through the haze
“Kissed my girl by the factory wall…”
Some hero surrendered a tooth
To the lip of a bottle
Held it high
The crowd went wild
Some punk accosted a wily old sport
The old sport smiled
Clocked the punk cleanly
The crowd went wild
Tears in an old man’s beer
He waxed sentimental
And looked upon this family of friends
Linked arms swaying
As they sang to his tune
And shared his sorrow
To survive one more night
“And a-rovin’ a-rovin’ a-rovin’ I’ll go…”
isbn 1-59661-163-4
56 pages/$9
Steven Gulvezan’s The Dogs of Paris wakes up the ghost of Charles Bukowski and offers him a stiff drink. This collection is full of wicked humor and a vision skewed to show the absurdities of our daily lives.
--Jim Daniels,
author of Trigger Man: More Tales of the Motor City
The Dogs of Paris is a stunner of a book. Gulvezan’s poetry is unassuming and unexpectedly delightful as potent blues rising suddenly from a pair of cracked, cupped hands. These are poems of probing insight into the human soul written with sardonic wit. Glorious long shot poems that pay off.
--Mark James Andrews,
author of Burning Trash
Steven Gulvezan is one of the most refreshing and original poets I have read in a long, long time. His unique sense of humor and his extremely clever poems will dazzle, astonish and stay in the mind of his readers for a long while after putting this book down. In fact, you won’t be able to put this book down. Gulvezan’s topics, wit, and wicked satire will keep the reader turning the pages to see if the poet can top the previous poem, and he always does. The Dogs of Paris is a stunning collection that will keep you howling.
--M. L. Liebler,
Detroit poet
and editor of Working Words: Punching the Clock & Kicking Out the Jams
Steven Gulvezan’s poetry collection, The Dogs of Paris, fuses the explosive fury of unrestrained language and dark evocations of loss and recovery. There are no boundaries in Gulvezan’s visions. His work has the powerful thwack of an axe slicing through living, breathing wood.
--Meg Tuite,
author of Domestic Apparition
Born in Detroit, Steven Gulvezan received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Wayne State University and has worked as a journalist and library director. He continues to live in Michigan with his wife, Karen, and his dog, Yogi.