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David Dayton
David Dayton

16 Followers

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Memories Rescued from Childhood Amnesia

And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3, New International Version “Where are you from?” was a nettlesome question for me. As an Army brat, I didn’t have a home town. Inevitably, I’d…

Childhood Memories

12 min read

Memories Rescued from Childhood Amnesia
Memories Rescued from Childhood Amnesia
Childhood Memories

12 min read


Pinned

Chocolate Makers and Missionaries

The happiness of every age is chained in mutual dependence upon that of every other. ― John Quincy Adams John H. Bater arrived in Boston in the 1840s from Devonshire, England. In 1848, he married Sarah Ann B. Williams, originally from Connecticut. Her bloodlines on both sides zigged and zagged…

Memoir

33 min read

Chocolate Makers and Missionaries
Chocolate Makers and Missionaries
Memoir

33 min read


Pinned

That’s Life: Writing Again after All These Years

Streaming classic Frank Sinatra songs, I found myself singing along: “I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet / A pawn and a king… .” The stuttering plosives are mischievous fun and they pivot on poet, the one metaphor in the list I take literally as applied to…

Writing Life

8 min read

That’s Life: Writing Again after All These Years
That’s Life: Writing Again after All These Years
Writing Life

8 min read


Pinned

Talking with John Gill at the Elysian Fields Cafe

1. You’re gaunt as Gauguin’s Yellow Christ, John, and your iconoclasm is so ingrained I see you’re cringing at that comparison. You sure you can’t see it? We could get you a sexy loin cloth, hire the hippie carpenters at Knock on Wood to make a splinter-free white-pine cross. Of…

Poetry

3 min read

Talking with John Gill at the Elysian Fields Cafe
Talking with John Gill at the Elysian Fields Cafe
Poetry

3 min read


Pinned

The Bus to San Simón

Motor groaning through a muffler that’s more like a microphone, this village jalopy lurches and rocks, rattling along at a jaunty burro’s pace. Both hands clutching the luggage rack, I sway in the crowded aisle. We standing hover like sulky ghosts above those with seats, the lucky ones complacently oblivious to us. The young man I’m hanging over…

Poetry

2 min read

The Bus to San Simón
The Bus to San Simón
Poetry

2 min read


Jul 25, 2022

The Housewarming

When we first moved in we found cigarette butts everywhere, columns of flaky ash marking where the old lady dropped them, and then forgot, or maybe just couldn’t find. The landlord said she smoked four or five packs a day. …

Poetry

1 min read

The Housewarming
The Housewarming
Poetry

1 min read


Jul 14, 2022

Photograph of a Suicide in the Morning Paper

Like jumping for the first time off the high dive at the pool when she was six, she finally just closed her eyes and hopped, sitting down in the air knees bent one hand trailing loose above her head the other hand pinching her nose. I later recalled with a startled grimace how cruel it seemed that her puffed cheeks held on so fiercely to the last breath.

Poetry

1 min read

Photograph of a Suicide in the Morning Paper
Photograph of a Suicide in the Morning Paper
Poetry

1 min read


Jul 12, 2022

Nebraska Noir, 1973

While fishing in Harry Strunk Lake, Dean McQuiety reeled in a foot and then an arm with hand attached. The detective said and I quote, Murder is no mystery only the motive. The stores in McCook have sold out of handguns, and after church there is talk. Packed away in someone’s freezer are the heads of that missing couple. The devil loves a good mystery. He is sitting up all night in Culbertson, behind a hundred bolted doors, and at a truckstop outside Kearney he is waiting for the next bus, inhaling cigarettes like rations of air.

Poetry

1 min read

Nebraska Noir, 1973
Nebraska Noir, 1973
Poetry

1 min read


Jul 12, 2022

Dusk

Spreading a stain of ripe mango The sun dissolves among plum-colored clouds We have come out again to watch And talk quietly or not at all Grateful, taking solace Like a last thought before sleep A dove homes toward the glowing rim Dragging a blue sheet That turns black when no one is looking

Poetry

1 min read

Dusk
Dusk
Poetry

1 min read


Jul 5, 2022

Mother’s Day

I’m tired of keeping my eyes tethered to the same old roads, seeing so much of so little of life through a windshield. I keep spying on my kids in the rearview. …

Poetry

1 min read

Mother’s Day
Mother’s Day
Poetry

1 min read

David Dayton

David Dayton

16 Followers

See https://www.pw.org/directory/writers/david_dayton Here, you’ll find draft chapters of a memoir and drafts of poems to be published in a book on Amazon.

Following
  • The Bold Italic

    The Bold Italic

  • Martin Vidal

    Martin Vidal

  • Anne Bonfert

    Anne Bonfert

  • Megan Ashley

    Megan Ashley

  • Cory Doctorow

    Cory Doctorow

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