GRAHAM FOUST, Featured IN THE OCEAN STATE REVIEW

Loop

Light awhile under
the door then gone
then you out into
the dawn and then
me back asleep.

*

Noon at the edge of
impatient water,
some named wind,
its nuances harder
than queens on their colors,
more children on the bus
than paying customers.

*

Night’s devices
turn out to be
someone else’s,
which crushes me,
quietly, even as
it pulls me from
a fire I’d set,
dividing who I was
from “What was I to do?”

A Lower Power

So you’re saying that if
we turn back, the path
becomes a labyrinth?

You keep your surcharge
dark to me, you hear?
—you lousy muse.

Bernini’s Anima Dannata

Found as imagined,
its folds an explosion’s,
a fine, cold thought
put by being to block,
one of always not
coming back from pain.

Graham Foust was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and raised in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. He lives in Colorado and works at the University of Denver.