“Great poems, like great songs and great drinks, make you want to throw the furniture through the window, so before you get going, reader, make sure the cops are somewhere else and then pour yourself a jar of Doug Cox’s heady brew.”

David Kirby, author of Talking about Movies with Jesus

“Doug Cox makes keen, clear, kind observations with a masterful ear—and that’s what great poetry’s all about.”

Jennifer L. Knox, author of The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway and Drunk by Noon

“Imagine a poetry one part Bukowski’s canny humor, one part Simic’s weird deadpan, and one part Jeopardy questions on American Rock Music—no, imagine whatever you fucking want. Just read this powerfully rich, authentically American debut collection!”

Frank Giampietro, author of Begin Anywhere

“Doug Cox’s gorgeous music chimes in his anarchic rhymes that join Johnny Cash and the Clash. He calls up “our hollow body’s live, / Most dissonant music” in a beautiful jazzy lingo that is a poetic bop of the most earthy spiritual kind.”

Barbara Hamby, author of All-Night Lingo Tango and Babel

In poems that call out to Joe Strummer and Otis Redding, Walt Whitman and William Matthews, freegans and SHARPs, mosh pits and the quiet just before sleep, The Last Decent Jukebox in America moves from dive bars and tour vans to political rallies and domestic follies with an enviable ease. Along the way, Doug Cox carves out a syntax and a rhythm at once uniquely his own and confidently in conversation with the traditions he's built upon in making this remarkable debut.

Gimme Gimme! Lemme See!

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Our Most Recent Release

The Last Decent Jukebox in America

poems by Doug Cox

Paperback, $14.00

isbn: 978-0-615-43347-9

Gimme Gimme!

Doug Cox got born and raised in Fresno, California. He holds degrees in English and creative writing from Cal Poly SLO, Indiana University, and Florida State University. His poems have appeared in Apalachee Review, Chiron Review, Crab Orchard Review, Eclipse, Juked, New Madrid, and Suss. He lives with his wife and their son in Colorado, where he teaches literature and creative writing at Mesa State College.

Excerpts

  1. Lullaby as a Second Language
  2. Punk Rock Portrait
  3. Air
  4. Quietly Off-Key

  • Lullaby as a Second Language

    It’s not just love, it’s sleep
    We need more than bread, more
    Than light, laughter, this stale water.

    We can go for weeks without
    Nourishment, shelter, slow blood-
    Warm curls of words breathed off

    Our foreign, our motherless tongues.
    It’s the falling we need, sweet dreams,
    & the rest. Plus, those songs just before.

  • Punk Rock Portrait

    Born white, pissed, privileged, one more well-versed freegan raised
    By parents with advanced degrees in business law,
    Home economics. Class? Rage? Just some thrift store phase:
    Electric-blue hair, pawnshop guitar, fists ground raw

    As beef. On stage, old-school thrash acts zines call scream-core
    Play “Hate & War.” Bands on tour spray-paint amps, brand new
    Conversion vans: This Machine Kills Dead Metaphors…
    Read: rehearsed encores, feedback, power chords, tattoo

    Sleeves straight edge SHARPs in Docs still rock, sick of it all…
    Pits full of screen-print faux-hawks, guest list fans, meth, sex,
    Scenes meant to shred rules, bootleg labels stripped as malls,
    Merch tables sold-out before Vets Hall shows, sound checks.

    Part lifestyle, third-wave rude boy mixed with twists of ska,
    Part snapshot pose tongue-stud punks perform, drunk by noon,
    Cheap cover charge paid to skank, mosh in mock-applause,
    Half keep time, make rent, do, stay, en masse, just out of step, tune.

  • Air

    —George Harrison (1943-2001)

    What can we do but break
    These knots of bread together
    & thank gods for their crust,
    This pale dish of yellow butter?

    Hold our cups below cold pitchers
    & pour whatever liquor we can
    Manage—like air it tastes
    Of iron, shared memory, blood.

    But who can stand to talk of mothers
    & fathers—our mothers, our
    Fathers? Love, this final chord
    Lowers over background speakers.

    Dull needles crackle at thin air. Tonight,
    At least, acknowledge our silence.

  • Quietly Off-Key

    —Donald Justice

    A song went looking for light,
    But that is another story.

    Cities burn behind us, the lake
    Glitters: Do not bother with odes,

    My son, an elegy is preparing itself
    For the suicides of 196__.

    The grandfathers holding this poem—
    It was his story, it would always be

    His story: June 13, 1933—
    Know (like a deserted beach,

    A map of love, nostalgia) one
    May depend on these old cemeteries.

    The poet: re: the question of
    Self-portrait as still-life,

    The classic landscapes of dreams,
    Unflushed urinals, & his voice

    Through the smoke & dull flames
    Of purgatory…

    When the lights go on uptown,
    X, you would not recognize me.