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Maurice Oliver
Winter 2008
& Evidence Of Wish Evaporation
Here’s how it works--
death waits for each of us,
like a page waiting to be turned
or a TV waiting to be turned-off
or the trigger waiting to be pulled
or a window shade
or the emergency cord on a train
or a zipper or just press the button
for God sakes
then tie your shoe
then put out that cigarette while
you’re at it
because a length of time
that lasts a lifetime,
your lifetime,
hardly like anyone else’s
Provocative, But No Documentary
She says she dismantles explosives for a hobby.
But the conversation really accelerates when I tell her
I’ve never put much faith in Father X’mas. It’s at that
point we realize we’re wearing identical hearing aids and
that a psychological suspense writer usually has a thumb
missing. The bond is complete. She shows me evidence
of gun powder stains using words that bounce against
my rubber dinghy as my toes dangle in the sea water.
She’s confused sometimes; she feels the cry of the world
sounds more like a dog’s yelp than pimples popping. She
says she would personally wipe-up every crisis if she’d
only remembered to pack a ratty gym towel in the duffel
bag. And the fog rolls in turning out to be colossal…
a Trojan horse with reclusive habits…
a phantom of utopia suffering from Down’s syndrome.
And life never utters just one complaint. The equator
strikes out in the third inning with men on base. An
asterisk precedes summer with a little reference in the
footnote. Even the lighthouse flashes back to more
murderous thoughts and the entire epidermis would turn
gray were it not for the high-voltage lines.
Whatever happens though, she’ll blame it on the soy sauce.
2005
Or Dreaming In A Coat Room
Not to forget the way back-
that path etched along a faraway wash of sequoias
in an ellipse then slipped between two seasons,
or in a configuration posing as a trail of wet leaves
and pine cones that wish they weren't so useless,
or entwined in a hedge that twists itself through the
rust-gray of reason in a dream only sleepers believe,
arriving at the wide brown of a dying field using a
plow to drag aqueous spirits inside.
All of this could easily be part of the persuasion.
Maurice Oliver
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