Today's posting is merely meant to inflate my rubber dingy of an ego! As another month comes to an end I sat down last night and discovered that my poetry is currently in a dozen different literary sites on the web. Heck yeah I'm happy. I can remember a time not long ago when I would submit set after set of my work. Sometimes I'd get a written rejection in the form of a canned email but most of the time not even that.
I like to say that my desire to be a poet started as a result of my trip around the world in '95, when I took the journal I'd kept and tried to turn it into poems. But actually, I sat on those "poems" for several years, sharing them only with friends. Then in 2003, after I was down-sized after a brief career in the banking industry, I found I had plenty of time on my hands. That's when I really began to read other poets work and seriously write my own. But even then, it would take another couple of months to muster up enough courage to make my first submission. The first literary site to accept a poem was Tryst3 Journal (thanks Mia), which was just the encouragement I needed. What was it someone once said about the power to dream...
Take a look at my poetry currently online at:
http://www.foame.org/
http://www.jackmagazine.com/
www.othervoicespoetry.org/vol25/index.html
www.noojournal.com/six.htm
www.unlikelystories.org/poetry.shtml
http://subtletea.com/
http://inditecircle.com/home
www.main.nc.us/wiresandwich/issue_five
www.freewebs.com/theorangeroomreview/currentissue.htm
http://blueprintreview.de/
www.hamiltonstone.org/hsr11.html
http://nzpoetsonline.homestead.com/index17.html
But before you do, here's two you can read:
The Correct Way To Drive An Abu Ghrib
In this scenario I marry the blue dress and end-up smiling
with an ice pick in my skull. Every dusty highway is lined
with blinking neon signs that declare "No Vacancy" or the
motel is a version of heaven for the affluent. There's fire in
the winter stars. The murky water in roadside ditches hum
Motown tunes. A guardrail that likes to hug. A dim railroad
crossing that prefers bow ties. Miles and miles of Route 66
with someones fingers tightening around its throat. A dirty
windshield with telepathic eyes. Either way, it all depends
on the price of gas and whether we can move the furniture
around enough to have the room we need todance to The
Supremes...
and the flicker of the candle grows imperceptibly taller as
it burns.
Interrogation, Chapter One
Everyone speaks in one hysterical tongue!
And by the time the phone in the deserted room
stops ringing she's an under-age drinker again. I
become half-past eleven in the middle of a light
snow flurry. We both feel like suicide victims who's
library books are overdue or the chronicles of an
unpopular war written on dog-eared pages on
acid-free paper offering little solace. Neither of us
are sure whether we should hold hands in public or
to use them to cover our genitals. No on can find a
clearing in the corn field or every ruffled shadow is
mistaken for crows. Either way, it's freezing in the
all-night convenience store and no one mans the
counter. If truth be known, even the little electronic
bell never goes off when we open the door to enter.
These poems were first published online at:
www.main.nc.us/wiresandwich/issue_five
Copyright 2007 by Maurice Oliver. All Rights Reserved.
Visit my e-zine at: http://www.concelebratory.blogspot.com/
And music blog: http://www.medleymakersant.blogspot.com/
I like to say that my desire to be a poet started as a result of my trip around the world in '95, when I took the journal I'd kept and tried to turn it into poems. But actually, I sat on those "poems" for several years, sharing them only with friends. Then in 2003, after I was down-sized after a brief career in the banking industry, I found I had plenty of time on my hands. That's when I really began to read other poets work and seriously write my own. But even then, it would take another couple of months to muster up enough courage to make my first submission. The first literary site to accept a poem was Tryst3 Journal (thanks Mia), which was just the encouragement I needed. What was it someone once said about the power to dream...
Take a look at my poetry currently online at:
http://www.foame.org/
http://www.jackmagazine.com/
www.othervoicespoetry.org/vol25/index.html
www.noojournal.com/six.htm
www.unlikelystories.org/poetry.shtml
http://subtletea.com/
http://inditecircle.com/home
www.main.nc.us/wiresandwich/issue_five
www.freewebs.com/theorangeroomreview/currentissue.htm
http://blueprintreview.de/
www.hamiltonstone.org/hsr11.html
http://nzpoetsonline.homestead.com/index17.html
But before you do, here's two you can read:
The Correct Way To Drive An Abu Ghrib
In this scenario I marry the blue dress and end-up smiling
with an ice pick in my skull. Every dusty highway is lined
with blinking neon signs that declare "No Vacancy" or the
motel is a version of heaven for the affluent. There's fire in
the winter stars. The murky water in roadside ditches hum
Motown tunes. A guardrail that likes to hug. A dim railroad
crossing that prefers bow ties. Miles and miles of Route 66
with someones fingers tightening around its throat. A dirty
windshield with telepathic eyes. Either way, it all depends
on the price of gas and whether we can move the furniture
around enough to have the room we need todance to The
Supremes...
and the flicker of the candle grows imperceptibly taller as
it burns.
Interrogation, Chapter One
Everyone speaks in one hysterical tongue!
And by the time the phone in the deserted room
stops ringing she's an under-age drinker again. I
become half-past eleven in the middle of a light
snow flurry. We both feel like suicide victims who's
library books are overdue or the chronicles of an
unpopular war written on dog-eared pages on
acid-free paper offering little solace. Neither of us
are sure whether we should hold hands in public or
to use them to cover our genitals. No on can find a
clearing in the corn field or every ruffled shadow is
mistaken for crows. Either way, it's freezing in the
all-night convenience store and no one mans the
counter. If truth be known, even the little electronic
bell never goes off when we open the door to enter.
These poems were first published online at:
www.main.nc.us/wiresandwich/issue_five
Copyright 2007 by Maurice Oliver. All Rights Reserved.
Visit my e-zine at: http://www.concelebratory.blogspot.com/
And music blog: http://www.medleymakersant.blogspot.com/
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