David Mason is the author of numerous poetry collections, including The Buried Houses and a work based on the Hawthorne classic The Scarlett Letter, entitled The Scarlet Libretto, performed for Opera Colorado (May 2013). He has written two essay collections as well as a memoir. Born in Bellingham, Washington, he earned a PhD from the University of Rochester and in 1994 received the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America. Mason teaches at Colorado College and serves as Poet Laureate of Colorado.


Photograph by Chrissy Mason.

Lieutenant Mason

by David Mason

You have to stuff it all back in,
the gut from a nicked
peritoneum.

That’s what the surgeon’s skill
was born to do.
To put it all back in
and close the wound.
People on couch
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