{"id":419,"date":"2017-01-04T15:32:37","date_gmt":"2017-01-04T21:32:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thespectaclstg.wpengine.com\/?p=419"},"modified":"2017-11-13T11:28:31","modified_gmt":"2017-11-13T17:28:31","slug":"poetry-by-graham-foust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/?p=419","title":{"rendered":"Poetry by Graham Foust"},"content":{"rendered":"
\nWHEN RHYME FAILS RHYME ATTEMPTS TO COME
\nTO THE RESCUE<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n
after W.C. Williams<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

 
\nAs it happens, most failures, which are most of what happens,
\nare like my having collapsed on stage but with the curtain down.<\/p>\n

Some of them, though, are like having, with a touch,
\nknocked over a huge imaginative structure to which<\/p>\n

I’d been adding for what felt like a thousand years.
\nSo I lie with myself, unsure how long I’ve been here:<\/p>\n

curtains and furniture; clouds that build and cling.
\nHard up for wet blossoms, more trivia slithers in;<\/p>\n

music gets easily confused again with place,
\nand only not living forever is all that’s the case.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

 
\n <\/p>\n

HYPNIC JERK WITH F TRAIN<\/strong><\/p>\n

In my phone and kind of knowing where the sun was,
\nmy crushed double finished work that I\u2019d begun.
\nThe day\u2019d bored into me; every song went \u201clike this.\u201d
\nI practiced many a removal. You could\u2019ve said I was a van.
\nAnd there was almost more to life, the money out there
\ngaping, a much-elated dread that even theory won\u2019t forbid,
\nand in the light-soaked scene of online banking,
\nmy inner voice of prudence left out principled language\u2014
\nall prudence all the time, a virtue possessed by grass
\nand by rats\u2014and if its sentences touched one another
\nlike states, they touched me that way, too; they programmed.
\nImagined at large, the world was more ward than field,
\nand as I slept for real, I saw the achingest scene\u2014
\nSaint Paul headless, Saint Peter still clutching his keys\u2014
\nand then the blanched car\u2019s abstraction like a print\u2019s third pull,
\nits impulsive disabling of my reverie, of me,
\nto which I said \u201cWhich future? What\u2019s above this?\u201d
\nbefore I uncraved and then pretended not to\u2019ve moved,
\nthe woman across from me screaming to her friend
\n\u201cHe has this truly awful laugh but they\u2019re in love!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n 
\n 
\nDIMINISHING RETURNS<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bury it. Dig it up. Chew on it. Repeat.
\nDactyl. Dactyl. Dactyl. Iamb.
\nTrochee. Trochee. Trochee. Trochee.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Thoughts are like parts that you can almost feel.<\/p>\n

Have one like a ribbon up your throat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n

Graham Foust\u2019s most recent book is Time Down to Mind<\/em> (Flood Editions, 2014). He is Director of Undergraduate Studies in English at the University of Denver.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Rhyme Fails Rhyme Attempts to Come
\nto the Rescue | Hypnic Jerk with F Train | Diminishing Returns<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[33],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}