Zócalo Public SquareJeff Oaks – Zócalo Public Square

Begin

by Jeff Oaks — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 07:01:41 +0000

Mystery who wanders the basement.
Mystery who kicks at the screen.
Mystery whose cowbells mean something is close
to appearing, to appearance.

Earth—Silence—open, don’t keep shutting
or turning mysterious (refuse to be
Rome, Jerusalem, Babylon, those stones),
struggle forward toward me.

There is someone here, waiting, not angry.
Is it even lonely? Similarly restless. Maybe
not even me either—watching the windows.
Tickle the wind chimes, wander the lawn.

Perhaps turn near the patio where someone—
not even me exactly—has left a full mug
of tea, sweet, milky, not even steaming
anymore. No one knows why. Not here at least.

The phone didn’t ring. I wasn’t hungry.
Nothing like the dog howling at the mailman.
No neighbor needing help. I just stood up—
but not me necessarily—and I went back to my life

to find it missing—or maybe it was me then.
Mystery, knock. The laundry can go on
being uninhabited. There is vodka in the freezer
so cold it might make a voice tangible, easier.

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The Drunk

by Jeff Oaks — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 07:01:12 +0000

The wind is sharpening its knives
on my father come in the dark
toward home, half wreckage,
half-bear in Christ’s cold garden.
His tongue is quit, tied,
flat: the journey shakes
in his steering. Father, father,
it is too far to the river.
Whatever you are,
I didn’t know. I couldn’t.

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The Nests in Winter

by Jeff Oaks — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 07:07:05 +0000

Of course the point is to be hidden, isn’t it?

To seem like nothing, to be forgettable,
to hold still. Lonely little things now,
the size of my fist and with a lid of snow.
It surprises me there were so many:
woven sticks, shuttled stalks of weed and grass,
the occasional scrap of blue or clear plastic,
proof of birds working invisibly in the world.
Right beside us. Even now. Even though
we can see right into the earliest light
in the universe. Even now that we can
count the atoms in a needle’s eye.
I assume the nest builders have flown south,
and will be back. I assume they’re not
following me around like a shadow that
will not sing. But I’m willing to
believe anything: that year after year
there arise secret nurseries right in front of us
in the small branches of the apricot trees,
themselves grown from pits strangers on the trail
spat out rather than wait for the trash cans.

Jeff Oaks’ newest chapbook of poems, Shift, was published by Seven Kitchens Press in 2010. His poems have appeared most recently in Bloom, Court Green, and 5 a.m.. A recipient of three Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowships, he teaches writing at the University of Pittsburgh.

*Photo courtesy of mmwm.

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