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# Two Poems by Brian Foley
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/two-poems-by-brian-foley/
- Published: 2019-04-17T11:01:33.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:39:40.000Z
- Description: Our poetry editor, Wendy Xu, has selected two poems by Brian Foley for her monthly series that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers.
- Author: Wendy Xu
- Tags: Poetry, Hyperallergic Poetry, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:34 (2019, 2020, part 1)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2019/04/sorolla.jpg)

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, “Girls in the Sea” (1909) (detail), oil on canvas, installation view at the Museu de Arte Antiga, Lisbon (photo by Elisa Wouk Almino/Hyperallergic)

## Friends & Family

However we  
hold each other  
under the attractive  
weight & prior  
extinctions, still  
with us, but not turning  
us still, we hold with  
an inner calm that is  
a closed, dying system.  
the sky there  
controls the stomach  
and there is no  
laughing melody.

Waiting to comprehend  
hunger again, you reap  
a thought to an object,  
and because pain is  
inexhaustible –  
temples,  
temples everywhere.

Suddenly to enter,  
you’ll have to answer  
for everything on that day.  
That we are people,  
we could have loved.

## A Thick Description

You know by  
going. migration,  
pushing it, you did.  
now, at greatest  
possible distance  
from what now is –  
a turning  
out the light  
for a long time  
after. about  
these things that  
don’t reach matter.  
for what if there is  
no more room.  
what if I don’t  
have a scent  
in I say. do you  
think it’s about  
that singleness?  
it isn’t ours.  
for anyone arrived  
at this point  
anything’s better  
than the grammar  
here, made to grip.  
it is radical what  
you can ask after  
words for mercy.  
though there may  
be other questions.  
they are there.  
they touch you  
so you exist.  
we can say within.  
that each ego leads.  
I leave off you  
and the concept of you  
you trouble to believe  
in as much as I do.  
maybe next time  
I will be the you  
who says no.  
but even said,  
we can’t say anything  
about it that proves  
we’re not yet  
on our own.

\* \* \*

Brian Foley is the author of [*The Constitution*](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1939568048/?tag=hyperallergic-20&ref=hyperallergic.com) (*Black Ocean*, 2014) and several chapbooks, most recently *Puritan Landfill* (*Black Cake*, 2015). His poems have appeared in *PEN America, Poetry Society for America, Boston Review, Verse Daily, The Volta, Denver Quarterly, The Fanzine*, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UMass Amherst and a PhD in Poetry from the University of Denver.