Even if I can’t radiate in this country tonight wears something bright A back and forth from bed to table
my insides rhyming streets with no power to die
A town can pull down the corners of a mouth but there’s song at the ankles it asks for directions carrying the people that lead me away from where I know to go
We can think every detail on earth to be a spine disturbed by coils of moonlight sufficient to overflow hearts missing the balance of what heaven
Who you are is not a where not the house felled into the sea by storm not the waves of no control
anything can be brought out of water if you fall in love with your breath by holding it
I haven’t known what will happen for very long but it is wonderful this life even if it’s not mine
78 The Paris-American
Brian Foley's first collection of poems, The Constitution, is forthcoming from Black Ocean. He's authored several chapbooks including TOTEM, out now from Fact-Simile Editions. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Boston Review, Fou, ILK, iO: a journal of New American Poetry, Sixth Finch, The Volta, and Aesthetix. With Julia Cohen he co-edits Saltgrass and with EB Goodale, he runs Brave Men Press. He lives well in Western Massachusetts.
