Tony Dawson

STEGOSAURUS SWALLOWS MAN! READ ALL ABOUT IT!

A man-eating stegosaurus?
“Pull the other leg,” I hear you say,
“There were no men on Earth
in the Late Jurassic. What's more,
the stegosaurus was a herbivore
so, it’s fake news.”

Not so! It’s a 21st century classic.
And who said anything
about the Late Jurassic?
It’s funny too that you
should mention legs.

In May this year, a middle-aged man
was found dead inside the hind leg
of a statue of a stegosaurus
in Santa Coloma de Gramenet,
a satellite town of Barcelona.
A mafia killing? A creative variation
on cementing the victim
into the foundations of a building?

But no – it seems the man
was photographing the inside
of the dinosaur’s mouth
when his phone slipped
down the statue’s throat,
and then down the back leg.

Attempting to retrieve the phone,
he climbed into the beast
through a small door in its belly.
Trapped headfirst down the leg,
he couldn’t wriggle out,
and unable to punch a hole
in the metal, he suffocated.

He’d been missing for two days
before his family decided
to call the police.


Tony's YouTube video reading of "Stegosaurus Swallows Man!":



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Tony confesses: "The report of this incident in the Spanish press struck me as epitomizing the kind of tragicomic deaths that occur from people’s obsession with using their cell phones to photograph anything and everything, particularly themselves. This has led to an increasing number of so-called “selficides”."

TONY DAWSON has lived in Seville since 1989 having had a career in higher education both in the UK and Spain. Some published poems in English include "Lithuanian Cat’s Cradle" in Critical Survey, "Embers" by Shoestring Press, "Chance Encounter" online at the londongrip.co.uk, several poems online in the Syndic Literary Journal. "Bitte Experience" is due out in summer 2021 in Chiron Review and "Sex Drive" and "An App for Ancient Swingers" in the November edition of Home Planet News. He has also published a number of poems online in Spanish.