The Germans From Dortmund, poetry

First Edition: y press (Vancouver, BC), 1999.

Revised Edition: LukivPress (Victoria, BC), 2022.

Various poems in this collection have appeared in one or more of The Speaker, Coffee Break, CHALLENGER international, The Little Gazette, The Cariboo Observer, The Brunswickan, Western People, The Journal of Secondary Alternate Education, The Journal of Poetry Therapy (USA), Poetic Realm (USA), Poetic Bridges (USA), Poets are Heroes, Too (USA), Moose Bound Tales and other Stories (USA), Improvijazzation Nation (USA), Omnific (USA), Up Dare? (USA), You Can't Take it with You (USA), Sidewalk Tales (USA), MOON Magazine (USA), Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream (USA), Poetry of the People (USA), Pink Cadillac (USA), Fullosia Press (USA), Cyber Literature: A Bi-Annual Journal of English Studies (India), Artslink (South Africa), and The English Teachers' Online Network of South Africa.

An excerpt

The Germans From Dortmund

The infertile beast

Embarrasses the Itcha Mountain-guide

Before two eye-rolling Germans

From Dortmund.

It lies on a strapped-on canvas bag of

Food and pots,

Glaring as only mules

Can glare.

"Gittum!" the bow-legged,

Horse-held guide

Demands of the one-eared collie

That then darts in,

Nipping a foreleg,

Barking,

Nipping a buttock, then

The nose, barking more,

Always drawing back just in time,

Avoiding the twitching mule's

Death-teeth.

*

Twelve years after

The Germans had returned to their

Homeland of dying Black Forest,

And after the collie had lost some hair

And molars,

It forgot-

Forgot as it edged a switchback,

Passing the grey hind legs.

A hoof caught it broadside,

Knocked it spinning, howling,

Into a 100 foot deep gully-

The mule's left ear twitched

When the thud came.

The mountain-locked old man had stopped.

The mule hadn't.

The old man didn't yell-

Oh, he nearly did:

That was his dog!-

But he remembered,

Like the grey mule,

He remembered that trip

With the Germans

Twelve years ago.

The author

Dan Lukiv, published in 19 countries, is a poet, novelist, columnist, short story and article writer, and independent education researcher (hermeneutic phenomenology). As a creative writer, he apprenticed with Canada's Professor Robert Harlow (recipient of the George Woodcock Achievement award for an outstanding literary career), the USA's Paul Bagdon (Spur Award finalist for Best Original Paperback), and England's D. M. Thomas (recipient of the Cheltenham Prize for Literature, Orwell Prize [biography], Los Angeles Fiction Prize, and Cholmondeley award for poetry). He attended The University of British Columbia (creative writing department), the acclaimed Humber School for Writers (poetry writing program), and Writer's Digest University (novel writing program).