Dream of Hydra Dream of Valdemar
Dream a Poachers Moon for a roadway
orphans getaway
Laid deep under Calvary Cross with knowledge
of no days concurrent
Three weeks that you by resurrect will
trade our release
Then I sit back and wander the
other fire to find you through identity concerts
Some day to wake up with ashes
The Barbary mother accomplices her Caesar’s last wish
Keening is a winter is a hunter wreaking havoc
on two
Looking back with dollar eye
I don’t recognize anyone
A chapbook that seeks to explore the emotional state of melancholic or profoundly nostalgic longing for a beloved yet absent something or someone, a state often associated with a repressed understanding that one might never encounter the object of longing ever again.
Oliver Dybing is a poet and conceptual artist residing in the Pacific Northwest. He thinks very deeply and not at all. His work has been featured in Upshod Quills, Spare Change, Second Factory, and Zaum Press.
Maybe you grew up on a bus or the back seat of a car, always on the way to someone who was never really there. [Dybing’s] lyricism plots the route, and it’s reliable. You thump with them just like years thump you, and maybe you grew up to find yourself in charge of the Big Journey, too. Maybe you are lucky enough to read these maps and like [Dybing] will see a way to wipe the vanity of hiding your head in your hands when you’re alone off the table. There is no farce here. Only fools rush in, but poems like these smack the fool off your fool face and help you stay the course. Travel-worthy work like this is real, not fadeaway.
Dena Rash Guzman
Chapbook
Hand-bound. 24 pp, 5.75 x 6 in
Publication Date: May 01 2024
Distribution: Asterism Books (US)