Graham Foust
Masturbatory
What this is is order.
What this is not is law.
Like a kind of rain, I’d say,
we cling to traces, creating these
equally real occasions.
A blessing that
my nerves are grass.
The wind
thumbs through a flag
thumbs through a flag.
Just below my throat, that laughing
capital of me, sits a succulent
light, rests a set
of less acceptable breezes. What
this is not is fantasy. (Or so says the autopsy.)
What this is is arousal’s
residue, the hands
as someone’s ghost.
Love poem beginning with a line from AC/DC’s “Ride On”
and ending with a line from Samuel Beckett’s Footfalls
Got another empty bottle and another empty bed.
There is no sleep so deep I would not hear you there.
Graham Foust wrote As in Every Deafness and Leave the Room to Itself. He lives in California and teaches writing and literature at Saint Mary’s College.