FALL 2010



Ben Myers

ORACLE

I will take my fits to be
            blessings.  I will
            take my fits to be.
Blessings on the cold room
            where I take my fits
to be fitted, tailor-stitched.

But starting from an image,
            say, the fog rising
            from its earthly bed
before dawn or the dark mounds –
            fat worm volcanoes –
left in the plain and grassless dirt,

I can begin to look down
            and drag deep my brain,
            just the way drag they
the untold river for bodies,
            only the bodies
come up half-ghost, un-dead eyes,

and sulk on the muddy banks
            of the upper mind.
            Take this long passing –
take this passing pickup truck,
            surpassing dust cloud
raised behind the truck in dry

protest of the long, dry fact
            of passing.  Or take
            this some one clear thing,
whatever it is, and get: 
            the Oracle waits
in the dark woods that aren't there.



Benjamin Myers' first book of poems, Elegy for Trains, was recently published by Village Books Press.  He teaches literature and writing at Oklahoma Baptist University.

 

 


 

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