A POEM BY MAURICE OLIVER


           Or The God Who Plunders Saltworks


           Sleep you can teach how to curtsy.

           The alternative story appears in pictures of sun
          on a lake of still water and includes a disclaimer.
          Some sunbathers from the gravel pit stop for lunch.
          "I'll rearrange your furniture if you give me an all-day
          admission pass", he says, hoping her birthmark is
          merely a quiet animal. " Sometimes the shapes &
          sizes can vary from a mustache to lead pipe", she
          replies, just before her barbershop closes. And
          over the years a trumpet becomes more & more
          vague...

          bringing buckets of ice water by day...
          & a fox loose in the chicken coupe by night.

          A list of ways to threat hysteria.
          Mental illnesses that are mistaken for scrap-metal...

          always in a straight line the trees the cars the traffic...
          & the way most taxidermists always seem to look so stiff.


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After spending almost a decade working as a freelance photographer in Europe Maurice Oliver returned to America in 1990. 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 taking pictures.

His poetry has appeared in The Potomac Journal, Circle Magazine, The MAG, Tryst3 Journal, Eye-Shot, Pebble Lake Review, Megaera, The Surface, Wicked Alice, Word Riot, Taj Mahal Review (India), Stride Magazine (UK), Dandelion Magazine (Canada), Retort Magazine (Australia), & online at Unlikely Stories, Subtle Tea, Interpoetry (UK), Kritya (India), & Blue Print Review (Germany). He currently lives in Portland, Oregon where he is a private tutor. His poetry blogsite can be visited at: www.bloxster.net/mauriceoliver.


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