Oliver de la Paz is the author of three collections of poetry, Names Above Houses (SIU Press), Furious Lullaby (SIU Press), and Requiem for the Orchard(U. of Akron Press). He is the co-editor of A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry. A founding member, he co-chairs the advisory board of Kundiman, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of Asian American Poetry. A recipient of a NYFA Fellowship Award, and a GAP grant from Artists’ Trust, his work has appeared in journals like The Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, North American Review, Tin House and in anthologies such as Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation. He teaches at the creative writing program at Western Washington University.
The boy in the labyrinth is tired of looking. There is a boy in the sky. The boy above coaxes his big shadow into a widening circle, encompassing the boy in the labyrinth. Between the two, an image–shadow over the face of one, shadow covering the body of the other. Sunlight behind the head of the boy in the sky,… Read more →
The boy in the labyrinth knows the possibilities of darkness: either the beast or not the beast. Either motion or stillness. Flowers push their heads through eye sockets. A little breath hushes the velvet black. God’s eyes pierce the gloom. The boy thinks about the minotaur’s music and his own lost ball of string. Whether the nest at the heart… Read more →
The boy in the labyrinth hums. An old tune. A tune from a long dream. A dream with beasts, filled with the odor of cumin and turmeric. A yellowed melody heard from somewhere but he cannot remember, having spent so many days looking at the sky, losing his place in the maze. Smells of earth, thick and autumnal. And the… Read more →
The boy in the labyrinth is led by his heart. Its thick systolic lurch. Its clear call from the carotid’s shunt. Somewhere the minotaur refuses to say hello. Somewhere lost moths beat themselves to death against a torch’s reflection. The actual light somewhere, which is a silence between the boy and the beast. That understanding. That repetition of silences as… Read more →
The boy in the labyrinth feeds the flame of his torch. Strips torn from his robe coil around the base for fire. And as the fire grows, so does his knowledge of the cold. The frayed ends of his threads wave like bare roots. The fire eats the air as lazy waves radiate in the haze. His bare thighs twitch…. Read more →