https://www.albany.edu/offcourse
http://offcourse.org
ISSN 1556-4975
A journal for poetry, criticism, reviews, stories and essays published by Ricardo and Isabel Nirenberg since 1998.
Poems by Oliver Rice
WHAT LORENZO SAID
Given the available world,
a truth is a postulation,
considering the apparatus of mind,
a postulation whose validity,
regarding the symmetries of darkness,
whose validity is so apparent,
perceiving the silence of the ruins,
so apparent that to reject it,
granted the despair of pure possibility,
to reject it would be absurd.
THE WAY WE STORE IT
The young man sitting at the base of the statue,
eating an apple,
is Paul.
Like an immigrant,
a collector of syllogisms,
a photographer,
he takes possession of the time and place.
The passing moments, the passing scene
belong to him,
the miscellaneous façade,
the vehicles, the tokens of humanity,
a sense of their multitude,
the awning in front of the café,
a daring bike rider,
a girl in a lavender dress.
HIS OBJECTIVE CORRELATIVES
ARE OBLIVIOUS
Down the grassy hillside
is an outcrop,
broken,
pierced,
mottled rust and gray.
The ragweed drips.
Later a flurry of starlings
hovers,
then vanishes.
Oliver Rice's poems appear in journals and anthlogies in the United States and abroad. Creekwalker released an interview in January, 2010. His book of poems, On Consenting to Be a Man, is published by Cyberwit and is available on Amazon. An online chapbook, Afterthoughts, Siestas, and his recording of his Institute for Higher Study appeared in Mudlark in December, 2010.