“For Three years out of key with his time”

There was a time I thought that a poem could
Be done & not abandoned, finished not
Just left inside a file cabinet
Like an old tax return, the debt
Outstanding, lingering, a time I thought
By other than some arbitrary date

poem by Mac Oliver

poem by Mac Oliver

            I can't tell if it's just a dream I've had.
            Gate's boiling up a stew; Irene's not well.
            He walks to find some fish heads, rice & beans.
            Papa Joe spots him, stops to talk. Algiers
            To the other side, they join the second line.
            I think they've come to play my funeral.
            I came to a violent end, monkey-wrench

Mac OLIVER  earned his degree from Tulane in 1994. Currently he studies poetry in the Doctoral program at the University of Minnesota. He has written reviews for Metre and Thumbscrew. His first book of poems, Ham & Mercury is being printed privately.

        Dawn on the levee, an old painter & I
        Watched the sky change & talked.
        Ohio, god forgive her, is where my
        Father's father's from: wade in tanks of pork
        And corn, thank chemistry to come.

        Now the light drains to bleak, the crow
        Like an oil pump pounds its beak
        Into stiffened turf of fall, bloody
        Factories & idle bones,
        Stacks, paths depeopled;
        No afternoon, it's done, the moon
        Blows in, the leaves now long
        Since gone: face the loss,

        She, even she, overrun,
        Has regarded, forced to, the stiffness
        Of death, sunk into spells into
        Drinking puddles, out of breath,
        Empties green upon
        The pavement's gray. Doorslammed, her hem drags
        On the road. She has had to re-
        Consider, turned by crowds into a fe-
        Line stray, though shapely still

    Let her hair wind round your hands, ignore
    A while you were once yourself so leased,
    A regular gawker with mouth agog,
    Chewer down of a page a day, demanding

    His exact double: Esmeralda mirrors
    A troubled self-image, mocks him for having
    Dreamt of a run through his old ruined garden,
    To plunge again hands into gooseflesh folds,

        Walled old Babel, I canter
        Through moist palms, marvel at your
        Languorousness, Madame,
        Ducts of water. Names

        Have been rubbed from the stones,
        Strippings to boss your stores, plunder
        So vast thighs bruised on floors