Stephen Oliver




In the Blink

 

 

Drought is the story of absences, equidistant

and everywhere—hills tawny, baked brown as

bread, light-tilted shadows that fall tall as

statues toppled. After the revolution, fields lay

bare, braided in rusted metal, mangled into

sculptures by moonlight. Mostly, the lamentations

had subsided. A moment of calm, but for how

long? Day and night, women picked through

the rubble, backs hooped, bent to the task, head to

toe dressed in black like giant birds of prey,

shuffling amongst broken ordnance, garments

dragging weighty as wings. An image snapped from

a television screen in the blink of an eye, recurrent

as nightmare, the same scene repeated with

machine-gun rapidity; a thing of terrible beauty.




Stephen Oliver is the author of 17 volumes of poetry. Traveled extensively. Signed on with the radio ship The Voice of Peace broadcasting in the Mediterranean out of Jaffa, Israel. Free-lanced in Australia/New Zealand as production voice, newsreader, radio producer, columnist, copy and feature writer, etc. After 20 years in Australia, currently in NZ. His latest volume, Intercolonial,

a book-length narrative poem, published by Puriri Press, Auckland, NZ (2013). A transtasman epic. Oliver’s work has been translated into German, Spanish, Chinese and Dutch. Forthcoming: poetry in Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology, edited by Melissa Tuckey, University of Georgia Press, 2016. His video poem, The Great Rogatus, can be seen here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6lJ24iskxA.









                                    

 

Home
Current Issue
Submissions
Contributors' Notes


Email this poem Printer friendly page

A CLOSER LOOK: Betty Adcock

Grace Cavalieri

Patricia L. Hamilton

Sonja James

Rod Jellema

Robert Krenz

Miles David Moore

Jean Nordhaus

Kyle Norwood

Stephen Oliver

Barbara J. Orton

William Page

Patric Pepper

Oliver Rice

W.M. Rivera

Peter Serchuk

M.R. Smith

Ellen Steinbaum

Myrna Stone

Robert Joe Stout

Tim Suermondt

Ayten Tartici

Rodney Torreson

Buff Whitman-Bradley

Katherine E. Young

More

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       

 

 

 

 

 


Last Updated: Feb 22, 2020 - 12:30:13 PM

Copyright 2005 - 2020 Cook Communication.