Dos Gatos Press

08/26/2025

The Dos Gatos Press editors have been busy reading and rereading submissions for the Southwestern aubade/nocturne anthology. After a close first reading, we are now in the second phase, looking again at our selections and our ratings. Yes, editors are not infallible, and depending upon time, mood, and other factors, it's always a good idea to look twice, thrice, etc. But I wanted to update folks so you know that decisions are being made. Once they are, you'll be among the first to know!

08/04/2025

Submissions are closed for the Southwestern Aubades & Nocturnes call, and we are busy reading & rating them. LOTS of poems to get through, but the work has begun!

07/30/2025

DEADLINE: July 31, 11:59 p.m. Send us your aubades and nocturnes.

Call for Submissions: Southwestern Aubades and NocturnesEditors Scott Wiggerman and David Meischen of Dos Gatos Press (www.dosgatospress.org) are accepting submissions for the sixth book in our series, Poetry of the Southwestern United States.Submit up to three poems between June 1, 2025 and July 12...

07/27/2025

JULY 31 DEADLINE:

Here's an aubade by the inimitable Dorothy Alexander:

Santa Rosa Sunrise

It all comes back to me now, almost
near enough to touch—a young girl
standing on a bridge, muddy red
water of the Pecos roiling below,

traffic swooshing by, the sun rising
behind her, smell of automobile
exhaust, sweep of desert, mountains
rising in the hazy distance.

Hitchhiking blindly toward her future,
imagining unbelievable freedom, she
turns, steps lightly, and enters into
the sweet music of the open road.

Sometimes I see her small boyish body
in my rearview mirror. I wave to her
trying to save what can still be saved
of that bright August morning in 1952.

Dorothy Alexander
Weaving the Terrain: 100-Word Southwestern Poems
(Dos Gatos Press 2017)

Call for Submissions: Southwestern Aubades and NocturnesEditors Scott Wiggerman and David Meischen of Dos Gatos Press (www.dosgatospress.org) are accepting submissions for the sixth book in our series, Poetry of the Southwestern United States.Submit up to three poems between June 1, 2025 and July 12...

07/25/2025

Six days left. Send us your Southwestern Aubades and Nocturnes.

Here's a visceral nocturne for you day:

Coyote

In the sure, pink vise of his bite,
he clamps the jackrabbit’s throat,
crushing the trachea
to ensure a quick death.

He drags his kill to the rocks
at the base of a mesa.
Gauging darkness with his ears,
he hears but the hushed

cacophony of grass and wind.
He plunges his muzzle
into his delicacy of entrails,
devours haunch, rib, foreleg,

gristle, and ultimately, bone.
Finishing off the carcass,
he submerges his body
in a pool of shadow,

merging his turgid belly
with the earth. As he sleeps,
the ghosts of fat rabbits
zigzag the prairies of his dreams.

Larry D. Thomas
Weaving the Terrain: 100-Word Southwestern Poems
(Dos Gatos Press 2017)

Call for Submissions: Southwestern Aubades and NocturnesEditors Scott Wiggerman and David Meischen of Dos Gatos Press (www.dosgatospress.org) are accepting submissions for the sixth book in our series, Poetry of the Southwestern United States.Submit up to three poems between June 1, 2025 and July 12...

07/22/2025

JULY 31 DEADLINE for Southwestern Aubades and Nocturnes.
Here's a nocturne for your reading enjoyment:

Not Exactly Lost

I am not the first
to sleep where the Bright Angel
meets the Colorado

not even the first atheist
to find god
when stars and silence overwhelm.

I could describe how sky turned purple
and completely miss the point.
It is enough that the sun has set

and I have hiked beyond the campgrounds
with no agenda or flashlight.
Not exactly lost

I rest on a fallen log
feel stones surrendering the day’s heat.
Coyote on the opposite bank

drinks aware, unstartled by my presence.
I could probably find my way back,
really should—but can’t quite figure out why.

Alan Gann
Weaving the Terrain: 100-Word Southwestern Poems
(Dos Gatos Press 2017)

Call for Submissions: Southwestern Aubades and NocturnesEditors Scott Wiggerman and David Meischen of Dos Gatos Press (www.dosgatospress.org) are accepting submissions for the sixth book in our series, Poetry of the Southwestern United States.Submit up to three poems between June 1, 2025 and July 12...

07/11/2025

Deadline extended to July 31!

Call for Submissions: Southwestern Aubades and NocturnesEditors Scott Wiggerman and David Meischen of Dos Gatos Press (www.dosgatospress.org) are accepting submissions for the sixth book in our series, Poetry of the Southwestern United States.Submit up to three poems between June 1, 2025 and July 12...

07/08/2025

Four days until our July 12 deadline. Send us your poems!

Call for Submissions: Southwestern Aubades and NocturnesEditors Scott Wiggerman and David Meischen of Dos Gatos Press (www.dosgatospress.org) are accepting submissions for the sixth book in our series, Poetry of the Southwestern United States.Submit up to three poems between June 1, 2025 and July 12...

06/30/2025

July 12 DEADLINE: Southwestern Aubades and Nocturnes

Call for Submissions: Southwestern Aubades and NocturnesEditors Scott Wiggerman and David Meischen of Dos Gatos Press (www.dosgatospress.org) are accepting submissions for the sixth book in our series, Poetry of the Southwestern United States.Submit up to three poems between June 1, 2025 and July 12...

06/21/2025

REMINDER: Dos Gatos Press Submissions Open until July 12:
Aubades & Nocturnes with a Southwest theme/flavor
https://dosgatospress.submittable.com/submit

June 12, 1982, Arches to the North Rim

Driving across the Hopi reservation
at 3:30 in the morning
everyone
including the driver
woke
when the car bounced to a stop.

Headlights illuminated a saguaro cactus
limbs lifted
in either greeting or surrender.
Cooling desert air
crackled against our bare arms.
No Peterbilts barreling on
signaled the way back.

Never occurred to us
we could have driven
off a cliff
broken an axle
or that the car
might not get us to the Canyon

because we were invincible—
recent grads living it up
on a cross-country boondoggle
armed with enough cold beer
and leftover pizza
to outlast any darkness.

Alan Gann
from Weaving the Terrain: 100-Word Southwestern Poems
(Dos Gatos Press 2017)

Call for Submissions: Southwestern Aubades and NocturnesEditors Scott Wiggerman and David Meischen of Dos Gatos Press (www.dosgatospress.org) are accepting submissions for the sixth book in our series, Poetry of the Southwestern United States.Submit up to three poems between June 1, 2025 and July 12...

06/16/2025

Here's another nocturne for you:

For Amy, Telescope Operator, McDonald Observatory, Fort Davis, Texas

I train binoculars on Mount Fowlkes
sixty miles northwest, bring into focus
a silver dome that tonight you’ll open
then aim the eighty-ton telescope’s
thirty-six-foot mirror at nebulae,
galaxy clusters, and supernovae
ten billion light years from Earth.

Between us, the Chihuahuan desert
blooms with prickly pear and ocotillo—
luminous hues of raspberry, rose,
lemon. Stalks of century plants,
twenty feet tall, tower; their panicles
of flowers glow like sunlit clouds.

The sheer blue sky now occludes
neighboring planets; the moon
is translucent, a thumbnail’s worth
of torn silk. The remote cosmos
you’ll measure has evolved
into these immediate splendors.

Marilyn Westfall
Weaving the Terrain: 100-Word Southwestern Poems
(Dos Gatos Press 2017)

06/13/2025

A Nocturne as Haibun

Canyon Winds

Canyon winds howl through city streets rearranging our lives. The neighbor’s mail is blown to my house. Mine is strewn across his driveway. Tumbleweeds slow traffic at rush hour on Cerrillos Road. Tonight all major roads in and out of the city are closed.

sleeping city
held hostage
by midwinter snow

Sleepless at 2 a.m. You phone me. I crawl from my bed to find my journal. Read love poems to calm your nerves. In bed the cat leans deeper into my thigh. “When will you leave me?” I ask the telephone. “Never.”

your voice
across the wires
broken promises

Barbara Robidoux
Weaving the Terrain: 100-Word Southwestern Poems
(Dos Gatos Press 2017)