CAROLYN OLIVER

Track Listing: 2008

1.      Explain the difference

2.      When you left the fire

3.      Trembled like a fern

4.      <instrumental>

5.      Arms hold up space

6.      Mornings caught in my teeth

7.       Not enough spit to lick a stamp

8.      Stinging

9.      Roses, their naked haloes

10.     Misplaced

11.      I can’t say I was looking for a sign

12.     And the light goes

Argent

after Winslow Homer’s Answering the Horn (1876)

urgent                                                                   ardent

figures dark                                    the woman covers

not shadowed                                              her mouth

underexposed                                            she’s heard

up slips                                                the voice of god

the eye                                                              breaking

where the light is                                  over the fields

wet shining silver                                      come home

threatening                                                   to save her

Carolyn Oliver’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in FIELD, Indiana Review, Cincinnati Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Booth, Glass, Sixth Finch, Southern Indiana Review, Sugar House Review, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the Writer’s Block Prize in Poetry and the Frank O’Hara Prize from the Worcester Review. Carolyn lives in Massachusetts with her family. Links to her writing live at carolynoliver.net.