Two Poems by Brian Foley
This week in the PEN Poetry Series, PEN America features two poems by Brian Foley.
Orpheus Come to Hell
I hear the people
who walked here.
I hear it and then you
hear it too.
On the road
the yellow leaves
coming to an end
never drop, stretching
out their change, some-
thing bright to mark
their bodies from
the black grass. Here
is what we know.
This is the music
they would listen to.
They were addicts.
Here is what we know.
We’re not crazy.
Our instruments
are impaired.
Far from civilization
we’re not where
we’re supposed to be.
So here we are.
And this meeting
is officially
about the possibility
of turning back.
Wine Dark Tree
Once upon a
time is a bone
I’ve dreamed of
being intercepted
by the shade of this tree
all my
life distorts the acts
of watching
You
work through
webs & starve
yr spider to death
The air weighs
a billion
pounds the lungs must itch
all of it through
its catalog – gods
without men without
women without children
2.
Life distorts
the acts
of watching
That nothing arrives
above it
among the shade of
this
day too will fail
to make history
Old Mary
full of grease
let useless be-
come Ulysses
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