bend and kiss what
you feel
contingent of what is

not
right now paranoia
the lands like you awful

lot due to stress of weather
the only place
by which

to be tidy is out

of this delicate wave
that the intercourse is

is born
as nothing
to the forest it is in

excess or in kind
veraciously to endear



About this poem
"Much of the thinking this poem does began in the maelstrom of Bergvall's 'Drift.' Drift, as concerns the navigator, the linguist and the geneticist, is both phenomenon and measure, source of change and result. Drift's counterpart is set, the rate of change. As concerns Duncan: 'What is advanced ... is the configuration of that given time,' and I seem to recall Susan Howe saying somewhere that space is music."
-Ossian Foley

About Ossian Foley
Ossian Foley is the author of "Of: Vol. I" (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2013). He teaches creative writing and works in the maritime trades in Cleveland, Ohio, and Port Townsend, Wash.

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(c) 2016 Ossian Foley. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate