David Bottoms’s numerous poetry collections include Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump, winner of the 1979 Walt Whitman Award, We Almost Disappear, and Otherworld, Underworld, Prayer Porch (Copper Canyon Press, 2018). He coedited The Morrow Anthology of Younger American Poets, and is also the author of two novels. Most notable among his many prizes is an Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Bottoms lives in Atlanta with his wife and daughter and holds the Amos Distinguished Chair in English Letters at Georgia State University. For twelve years he served as the Poet Laureate of Georgia.

Four Poems

by David Bottoms

Love at the Sunshine Club

Macon, Georgia, 1970


Bloody smear across the moon
and I’m thinking again of the sucker punch that decked
   me at the Shine—
Forsyth Street, forty years ago.
Two bikers, the bartender, me, and to light the fuse
a skinny girl in skintight blue jeans
                                                             casually humping the jukebox.

People on couch
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