Maurice Oliver

LOVE OR A USED TOOTHPICK

Dear Samantha,

If only everything could talk. I'd help it draw your best yoga
position then buy my baby a mockingbird. Naturally, love
would be the beginning of our reliable assortment of
firearms and devotion would be our ammunition. The dozen
red roses would stand for a fable and cupid would be just
another weird kid who blew up the miniature trains. I know
you still believe in the power of invisible shoelaces but I
won't hold that against you. We both might turn out to be all
the wine in France or maybe even just an aged cork. All
I know is that I think this time something will really happen
without having a solar eclipse. We could let our fingers do
the walking through the romantic language of the yellow
pages and find the retread we've always longed for. And who
knows, we might decode the parrot of homeland security
at the expense of vocabulary in the process. Here is the
moment! I am the bed. Let's not make the same mistakes
we made before and end up clipping too much of our tails
off or worse, mistake the corsage for a steam locomotive
and wake-up in a sleeping car headed for Albania, blinking
out into a completely undressed hour.

Maurice Oliver's poetry has appeared in numerous national and international publications and literary websites including Potomac Journal, Pebble Lake Review, Taj Mahal Review (India), Dandelion Magazine (Canada), Stride Magazine (UK), and online at thievesjargon.com, interpoetry.com (UK), kritya.com (India), blueprintreview.de (Germany), and is forthcoming in The Arabesques Review (Algeria). His forth chapbook, "One Remedy Is Travel" was published in August '07 at Origami Condom. The editor of the ezine Concelebratory Shoehorn Review (www.concelebratory.blogspot.com) he lives in Portland, Oregon, where he works as a private tutor.