Philip Byron Oakes

Now is Here

Deep fried coagulants stall traffic,
in sacred heart school Five drachmas please
Three swinging doors to your left…the other, the other left
Pitiably jutted jaw launching ambushes on imported turf

Amateur oglers pitching tents, as far as they would fly
into the footnotes Victory at sea

The arctic pains, where ice is king 13 o’clock
Tall grass is the next to go Tawdry curriculum pervades
the slobbered utterance spawned over coffee and smoke

A police force is what you make of it
A calliope and a library lip
No, the tainted olives won’t succumb to the rites of passage,
the furtherance of the lesser for the most part

That’s for what’s left to say
The lemon trees posturing as canopies
The forthright burying cousins in the yard
Immaculate mud bath The gondoliers
are coming The multiple choice questions are gone



Philip Byron Oakes: b. Tulsa, OK, lives in Austin, TX, B.A. English Lit., University of Houston; his work has appeared in Horse Less Review, Sawbuck, descant, Oxford Magazine, among others. He has recently published a chapbook, Rain and Bread (Leatherleaf Press***Austin, Texas)


 
 
 
previous page     contents     next page