Dance in the Dirthouse

Patrick Lawler

October 2025

The Poem That Used to be a Novel
Before it Was a Script
Before it Was a Poem

Praise for Dance in the Dirthouse:


“Thought is a thistle,” Patrick Lawler writes in his new full-length collection, Dance in the Dirthouse. It is an apt metaphor for these poems as well, exquisite, but sharp, requiring care if you are going to hold them. Each poem is a mere six lines, yet in those lines Lawler explores elemental themes. “We are being tested by the brain,” he writes. “We wander between / the endless supplies of gratitude and hunger.”



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RUPTURE

I work all day in the Honey-Mine. When I went to church,
the best advice I received was not to be combustible,
and still, I have a migraine of the soul.
It is beautiful how knowing brings forth a world
        with thick drops of melted mirror.
How to explain the burst pipe of rapture?

DREAMING IN THE DIRT

Clouds rub over the rooftops of the town.
Thunder is a wheelbarrow of coal tumbling down a cellar stairs.
We look up to see the white knuckle of the moon.
Night paws                    the windows.
Eventually, we have an appointment with Light.    Waiting
for us     outside     is the mysterious     within.