David Southward

CONTACT:
3363 N. Maryland Ave.
Milwaukee, WI 53211
(414) 251-7399

BIO:
David Southward grew up in southwest Florida and earned degrees in English from Northwestern and Yale Universities. In 1998 he joined the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he currently teaches courses in literature and graphic arts. David’s publications include Apocrypha, a sonnet sequence based on the Gospels (Wipf & Stock 2018), and the collection Bachelor's Buttons (Kelsay Books 2020). David is a two-time winner of the Lorine Niedecker Prize from the Council for Wisconsin Writers, and in 2019 his poem "Mary's Visit" won the $1,000 Frost Farm Prize for Metrical Poetry. David resides in Milwaukee with his husband, Geoff, and their two beagles.

PUBLICATIONS:
Apocrypha (Wipf & Stock 2018)
Bachelor’s Buttons (Kelsay Books 2020)

Poetry

Trench Art

It spoke to me across the cluttered shop
we’d wandered into. Slim and turtle brown,
the vase of hammered copper was inscribed
neatly in French—a single word, “Argonne,”
hinting at what it was. I picked it up
and recognized the shell-case underside.

The rheumy-eyed collector of antiques
grinned like a boy, and with a trembling hand
pointed to where the firing pin had tapped
and sprayed out leaden shrapnel seeds that fanned
the smoking fields. The delicate techniques
that soldiers learned to whittle their huge crop

of empty shells, inspired a kind of awe.
I saw them: young men desperate to go home
yet knowing war can’t end until you win it.
They picked through scrap, believing there might come
from suffering, which all men undergo,
a trophy for one’s shelf—with tulips in it.

(First published in Measure)

1974

For Christmas, all my wishes are fulfilled:
Malibu Barbie, Ken, their luxe RV.
From Dad’s unease, I sense that he’s not thrilled—
but nothing’s going to blunt my ecstasy
at handling these forbidden figurines
I love their graceful poses, plastic smell,
the way my mind heats up with lurid scenes
not pitched in any boardroom at Mattel.
On a dark beach, Barbie and her man    
pledge love before their god on rubber knees
while bandits, crouching, eye their caravan
from the dense shadows of surrounding trees.
When boys ask me to play, I’ll leave inside
this outlaw Barbie world it’s best to hide.

(First published in THINK)