Brands by Dave Oliphant

           
                                         
                                         




















Cover design 
by Jim Jacobs                            
after Pancho Villa's 
death's head brand                        


When I last awoke this morning, thunderstorms were blustering thru,
so I spent some of that time reading Dave Oliphant's Brands, a
chapbook published by Road Runner Press in 1972.  In it I noted his   
"Padding" poem had four lines which were obviously too long for the  
page and therefore had their ends tucked under to the far right.     
It could be they are supposed to be that way, but I will be sharing
"Padding" here with the lines full out.  He was in Malta, Illinois,  
at that time.  Ten years later, when I was briefly in Austin, Texas,
I had a short visit with him.  His chapbook's title comes from a    
sequence of six cattle brand poems in it.  He is a native Texan who
for many years was the editor and publisher of Prickly Pear Press.                  
                                                                   
                                                                    
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PADDING                                                             
                                                                    
                                                                    
anything to make it easier on the mind                                
to keep the real thing out of the crush                            
block passage on the House & Senate floors             
in verse Unamuno justified / found it fitting  
but for none / not one of the reasons above                
                                                 
& o what stoic Spanish tho't would've been his comfort then   
lined / laced with arabesques / Moorish words like almohadas
on hearing me declare verbiage to be the lot / the lonely           
the only stuff for making song / when what he wanted         
was marrow / a little carne along with the bone         
                                                                
just to get free from figuring it out                     
I'd say / well / waste is the American way          
cardboard-box a tree & save a buck eighty                   
but that won't do & neither will asylum walls                
this banging unbruised into devils inside our cells           
                                                        
when everywhere it's plugging up or knocking holes           
in the Giants' / the Rams' / the Jets' defenses           
covering up for the collected poems can't even copy lux fiat 
under the stoop leaves & twigs hibernating the frogs               
string & straw soon to hatch a singing in the eaves               
                                                            
                                                        
                                                        
                                                       
                                                          
                                                       
                                                           
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