ADVERTISEMENT
The Belfast Bodhisattva
Jeffrey Dunn, author
Jeffrey Dunn’s slim volume of poems answers the question, what happens when Saint Patrick leaves Belfast, becomes an enlightened Buddhist, travels to Spokane, Washington, U.S.A., and becomes known as Belfast Patrick? For those who remember Richard Brautigan, this little book is "The Galilee Hitchhiker" for our 21st Century.
Go on a shopping spree to Belfast Patrick's decidedly spiritual hardware store, dance during Lent in a parking lot with Patrick and a group of nurses who have just received their ashes. Hear Patrick's wife Sheela ask, "Why don't/you come to bed/and drive/your nail/into this old cross." And go fishing with Patrick as he ties on a graveyard and casts it out for a rising redband trout.
Are these poems rooted in the Western American experience? Yes. Are these poems as mundane as a noddle factory? Yes. And are these poems as surreal as a sermon on the mount delivered to a bin of discarded grocery cans? Yes.
Visit The Belfast Bodhisattva today. Once you’ve been there and back, life will never again look quite the same.