Graham Foust


Secret Rerun

Even unthreatened, you're
a goner, singer. Say this
and your face goes
under. We're of the same dark
ages, same flashes, but my mouth
is more a cause-effect flower.
There's a room—Hello!—full
of everything we've ever out-
grown, and not a bit of it
is money. The creatures
there were killed for so much less
than their obvious sweetness.
The barely dreamt-of alarm's
the more frequent alarm.
I make us explain—A passing
machine shines
missing.—the screen, a slice
of lecture dire with color.
Calculable—Got it.—and radiant
cuts, that's
the policy. The world
was always yours, you.
The dead are fine. The dead
are fine. The dead are fine.


Retarded Artifact

Give me reasons not to be
oblivion, irony.
Like something in Wisconsin,
I am all the dirt I know.
Having come to in someone
else's boredom, I'm alive—
and it's an all-new boredom,
a boredom of cathedral
proportion. Empty as folk,
I just make up, make over
everything. Lately, I don't
even want a piece of me.


about Graham Foust