Poems of the Week

THREE POEMS BY GRAHAM FOUST

Skull

Such a white planet.

And what scars
the eyes are,

what page the lack of face.

Compare this
to flowers

in a house.

Politics

Leave the room
to itself. Compare it
to a sleeping,
living creature.

Time is the dark-
packed house
of this place,
the luck of the desert

cut
into the floor of the desert.

Everything
is ready.
A light burns
wherever necessary.

Like skin,
like a prison,
each thought’s
an instant ruin.

Leave the room to itself.
Here’s a needle. Here is the sea.

We Are Not the World

though we approve it
and of it.

We are cargo, we know.
We know everything.

*all from Leave the Room to Itself, Ahsahta Press, 2003.