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We are a public forum committed to collective reasoning and the imagination of a more just world. Join today to help us keep the discussion of ideas free and open to everyone, and enjoy member benefits like our quarterly books.
Darkness’s rivets weep white ink, hence the night
sky in a place without much light pollution.
“I’m the one who stands here while you do the work,”
says the one who stands there while you do the work,
who helps truth to hurt, if that’s still doable.
Welcome to a world like everyone else’s,
the table side of a plate of someone’s head.
Can’t sleep? There’s always the question of whether
it’s even possible to murder a seed.
On that day in history I wrote these lines—
“prosopagnosia: face blindness (just into
curiosity; dull as evil, I guess)”—
which refused to be a sentence until now.
In my mouth, a song I almost listened to,
a song that used to sound like the future, but
today just suggests the somewhat recent past,
the speed at which I’d be expected to clean
were I able to stain at a different rate.
Too filthy or too pure and I’m no person.
Too filthy or too pure and you’re not turned on.
Graham Foust is author of Leave the Room to Itself, As in Every Deafness, and most recently Necessary Stranger. He is on the creative writing faculty at St. Mary's College of California.
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