Then finally, the curtains of the stage nosily raise.
Actors stand around in small groups or wonder into
a brightly-lit cafe that serves free coffee refills.
She nibbles off most of Sunday. His face pretends to
be a tag-team match or the blue-haired lady all the
other guest ignore. Land rushes wet. Exit doors slam.
Entire lives spread out on a green lawn until someone
spots a cloud. Or the maid dares the chubby kid on a
tricycle to ride over her foot. She thinks she's made
enough tuna sandwiches until the busload of nuns
arrive. The poet is a Russian cosmonaut. Frenchie is
a beret. The bank clerk turns out to be an aging Irish
setter from Cleveland. Everyone tries to conceal their
own small pleasures. But eventually, even the marquee
wears a thicker sweater. A hardware store is confused
for mortality, a bakery thinks it's invisible despite
the red socks. Some parachutes never open. And all
the audience can do is watch, making faces at whatever
decides to move on the other side of the bars.
He tries to picture her face, but only sees:
-That job in an office with no windows.
-The canary that went down the coal mine.
-Three circus elephants dressed in pink.
-A summer lane with dust billowing up.
-Garlic hanging above someones doorway.
-A four-leaf clover pressed into book pages.
-That first ill-fitting three-piece suit.
-The ornament on the hood of a '48 De Soto.
-A heavy-set man shuffling a deck of cards.
-Royal parchment paper smudged at one end.
-That stack of cherished comic books.
-A field alongside the unused railroad line.
-Even the swarm of gnats that would blind him.
A man jumps from the twentieth floor but floats down.
Escapism hanging on a coat rack. A banquet honoring
vinegar. Falling leaves. A crowd waiting for the
arrival. Or on a park bench with a grassy knoll to
fondle. Shopping at a best friend's house. A telephone
with two mouthpieces. A cookbook story of our lives.
Busy crosswalks. Phony street signs. To have a
pre-conceived notion of downtown Phoenix. "I see you've
learned to travel light", she says, noticing the
flight bags under my eyes. "Yeah, and you must be on
your way to palm reading class", I reply, searching
for the tube of hand lotion. Hot bath. Fragrance-free
shampoo. Pickpockets working the market stalls. Then
later, I dream that weapons are the witnesses...
naked with sunlight entering our forest...
or we could test drive an Italian hair dryer.
A full stomach or sky adrift in a lifeboat.
Until everything around us looks like shoelaces or
maybe just a bit rambunctious in a rash, wearing a
dark catacomb and paste-on mustaches as disguises.
Maurice Oliver spent almost a decade working as a freelance photographer in Europe. Then, in 1995, he made a lifelong dream reality by traveling around the world for eight months, recording his experiences in a journal instead of pictures. And so began his desire to be a poet. His poetry has appeared in The Potomac Journal, Circle Magazine, Bullfight Review, Tryst3 Journal, The MAG, Eye-Shot, The Surface, Wicked Alice, WordRiot, Taj Mahal Review(India), Stride Magazine(UK), Retort Magazine(Australia), & online at subtletea.com, undergroundvoices.com, friggmagazine.com, tmpoetry.com, zafusy.com, girlswithinsurance.com, & interpoetry.com (UK). He lives in Portland, Oregon where he is a tutor.