Laura Foley
Laura Foley is a bi/queer poet, author of nine poetry collections. She has won a Narrative Magazine Poetry Prize, The Common Good Books Poetry Prize, The Poetry Box Editor’s Choice Chapbook Award, the Bisexual Book Award, Atlanta Review’s Grand Prize and others. Her work has been widely published in such journals as Alaska Quarterly, Valparaiso Poetry Review, American Life in Poetry, and included in numerous anthologies such as How to Love the World and Poetry of Presence.
Good Fences
Good fences make good neighbors,
Frost famously said (though he argued
the opposite), and boy are we building a high one
at our new house—not stone on stone,
as his was, but cedar poles
and attractive black mesh
you can see through
to the wild oak woods beyond.
An inconvenience to the deer family
passing nightly from the river
up past the gorge, but no person
walks that weed-thick bit of our yard.
So, when our nonagenarian neighbor,
angry about the new construction,
exits his house hurling insults
against us two women,
we’re astonished—our fence built not,
as he says he suspects,
to keep him from raping us, but
to keep our gentle canines safely in,
and now, in our liberal college town,
in what I thought were the enlightened
2020’s, as he snaps and growls,
I find myself admiring the wisdom
of some division,
just as Frost’s savage neighbor did.
Livestreaming in Lucky Cafe
He hums the alphabet song
as his fingers trace
embossed license plates
adorning the wall by his chair.
I hand him some blueberry scone,
some cheese. He sings,
noticing me, noticing him,
and the soft rain just beginning
to silver our window,
and the road, the park,
the evergreen hemlocks,
maple leaves beginning to turn,
this warm late summer day.
Strangers smile at us,
and he dimples back.
He traces a letter M, for Milo,
then G, for Grandma.
The rain slows, stops,
then begins again.
