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Brian Foley

If I were to talk myself / into myself, if I were / at a loss being in loss


There are Times, and this is One of Them

You’re out there
sanitized with clarity
Do I hassle
anything in this skulk
except for rules
Should I not sing
we live in a place
not ourselves
no quiet or compass
to run us down
If I were to talk myself
into myself, if I were
at a loss being in loss
it should be said
I remember held
contures of a word
unseen but felt
we break up a word to want
at         one        ment
it is not the world
to be in one
place breaking
the world has separated
while you slept
you blame its darkness
on anyone but yourself

Chortles

Come back to the apple.
Nobody dies in a list.
On the chin I have hidden
a latch but the grin
buckles at a gulf of trench
ant balk, lifting volume from
sinking muscles mulled.
Shake down my eyes indifferent.
Slabs that dark within their bars.
I know these axes staple
such clogs loose, for listen moves
ruled, moonless, aloof
when I think laughing
has buried me in a rank. Whose.


Brian Foley's first collection of poems, The Constitution, is forthcoming from Black Ocean. He's authored several chapbooks including Going Attractions (Greying Ghost, 2012) & TOTEM, out soon from Fact-Simile Editions. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Fou, The Paris American, ILK, iO: a journal of New American Poetry, Sixth Finch, The Volta, and Aesthetix. With Julia Cohen he co-edits Saltgrass and w EB Goodale, he runs Brave Men Press. He lives well in Western Massachusetts.