Tag: Laura Foley

Two Poems by Laura Foley

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Coming Out to My Sister

My sister—
the aloof one—
wasn’t, that day.
She took my arm,
led me through Georgetown,
sunlight on brick sidewalks,
into a small boutique
where we found clothes
soft as permission.

I chose a black silk cape,
delicate women stitched
across the back—
a garment that felt
like stepping into myself.

For a little while
she smiled at me,
held clothes to my shoulders,
wanting to see
who I might become.

Many years now
she hasn’t called,
doesn’t answer emails—
has slipped again
into distance, into silence.

But the cape still hangs
in my closet,
light as breath,
reminding me
of the one day
we were gentle
with each other.

*

Tea and Sympathy

She drives all the way to my house,
up a steep hill in the woods of Vermont.

“I understand—this is someone’s life,”
she offers, as she stamps and signs,
as I sign and sign, blue pen looping my name.

We sit at the kitchen table.
She pats our dog,
explaining how, in her free time,
she takes in elderly Labradors
at the end of their lives.

“Give them a year or two of happiness.
One just passed, last week.
I still wake at night to take him out.”

We share spiced cookies,
Earl Grey tea,
as she tells me about her health,
a difficult teenage son,
how she loves to work on her own.

Meanwhile, I’m signing page after page—
tax documents, a deed—
as I sell my sister’s townhouse in Texas,
the one she flooded
as she was dying in her tub.

Sheila places her cup in the sink,
scans the documents into her phone,
beams them off across the country.

As she leaves, I feel lighter,
freer of a sister
I hadn’t known well—hadn’t seen in forty years;

thankful for the sympathy—
a notary
whose stamp feels like kindness.

*

Laura Foley is the author of, most recently, Sledding the Valley of the Shadow, and Ice Cream for Lunch. Sister in a Different Movie (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions) is due out later this spring. She has won a Narrative Magazine Poetry Prize, Common Good Books Poetry Prize, Poetry Box Editor’s Choice Chapbook Award, Bisexual Book Award, and others. Her work has been widely published in such journals as Alaska Quarterly, Valparaiso Poetry Review, ONE ART, American Life in Poetry, and anthologies such as How to Love the World and Poetry of Presence. She holds graduate degrees in Literature from Columbia University, and lives with her wife on the steep banks of the Connecticut River in New Hampshire.

ONE ART x The Poetry Box Reading

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Sunday, March 1, 2026
ONE ART x The Poetry Box
Featured Readers: John Arthur, Katie Dozier, John Wojtowicz, Laura Foley
Information & Registration via The Poetry Box
Tickets are FREE!
>> Register Here <<

~~~

A special crossover event celebrating poets who have been published in ONE ART and who have been winners of The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize.

  • Katie Dozier – Editor’s Choice Winner, The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2025 for All That Glitter

You can learn more about The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize, which is open from February  1st thru March 15th, at ThePoetryBox.com/chapbook-prize.

About the Poets:

John Arthur is the author of Lucy the Elephant Wins in a Landslide. John is a writer and musician from New Jersey. His work has appeared in Rattle, DIAGRAM, Frogpond, Failbetter, trampset, ONE ART, and many other places. He has worked as a valet at a casino, a waiter, a Ferris Wheel operator, a cook, a pizza delivery driver, a fast food delivery driver, a landscaper, a journalist, an editor, a librarian, a library director, a manager, and for one long, hot day as a guy going door to door asking if you’d like to donate to the Sierra Club.

You can purchase John Arthur’s winning chapbook at:

https://thepoetrybox.com/bookstore/lucy-elephant

(or wherever you like to buy books)

————————————

Katie Dozier’s love of poetry first bloomed as a child. She memorized Robert Frost sitting on a tree stump and bathed in Edgar Allan Poe as an adolescent. While studying words at Florida State University, Katie also played with chips and became a professional poker player. She’s passionate about encouraging others to discover and share contemporary poetry—through her social media, Substack, and NFTs.  Katie is the author of All That Glitter; Watering Can: a Month of Poems; and the co-author of Hot Pink Moon: a Crown of Haibun and Did You See the Moon Honey. She is the creator of the top-rated podcast The Poetry Space_,   the haiku editor for One Art,   and an editor at Rattle. Katie lives in The Woodlands, Texas, with her husband Timothy Green, their four children, and way too many books.

You can purchase Katie’s winning chapbook at:

https://thepoetrybox.com/bookstore/glitter

(or wherever you like to buy books)

————————————

John Wojtowicz, author of No Lightsabers in the Kitchen, grew up working on his family’s azalea and rhododendron nursery and still lives in the backwoods of what Ginsberg dubbed “nowhere Zen New Jersey” with his wife and two children. Currently, he teaches social work at Rowan College South Jersey. He has been featured on Rowan University’s Writer’s Roundtable and the Painted Bride Quarterly’s Slush Pile Podcast. Several of his poems were selected for Princeton University’s 2021 Unique Minds: Creative Voices exhibition at the Lewis Center for the Arts. When not writing, teaching, or rolling around in the yard, he enjoys monitoring bluebird boxes, volunteering at the Cohanzick Zoo, and flipping horseshoe crabs.

You can purchase John Wojtowicz’s winning chapbook at:

No Lightsabers in the Kitchen

(or wherever you like to buy books)

————————————

Laura Foley, author of Ice Cream for Lunch: a grandparents handbook, is also the author of ten previous poetry books, most recently, Sledding the Valley of the Shadow. Her book Why I Never Finished My Dissertation received a starred Kirkus Review and an Eric Hoffer Award. She has won a Narrative Magazine Poetry Prize, The Common Good Books Poetry Prize, Atlanta Review’s Grand Prize and others. Her work has been included in many journals including: Alaska Quarterly, Valparaiso, Poetry Society London, Atlanta Review, Poetry of Presence, and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. She lives on the steep banks of the Connecticut River in New Hampshire, and romps with her grandchildren as often as possible.

You can purchase Laura’s book at:

https://thepoetrybox.com/bookstore/ice-cream-lunch

(or wherever you like to buy books)

The Crosstown Bus by Laura Foley

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The Crosstown Bus

We board with our senior passes,
then we’re five Brearley girls chatting,
remembering Mary who lived on 86th,
loved everything horses,
and that movie we watched
at her house when we were eight,
black and white, with eerie music,
two climbers on a rock ledge,
one pulls a long rope to find
his friend on the other end, dead…
Artist Sarah remembers
Ellen’s magenta bedspread,
as she points to a lady near us
with a corduroy coat just like it,
all of us imagining Ellen’s leaf pattern—
Ellen, who lived on First,
and moved away, who owned
a Vermont bookstore, and died
last year, and now I’m remembering
her childhood apartment
with the elevator button NS,
how we pretended it stood for Nancy Snow,
her little sister, but I knew
it was really Non Stop, and how
they had a basset hound, what was his name?,
with prostate problems, everything
hanging low to the ground, and now
we’re roaring, five senior citizens giggling
as we cross town on a crowded bus
that takes us through our lives,
until we get off, at different stops.

*

Laura Foley is the author of, most recently, Sledding the Valley of the Shadow, and Ice Cream for Lunch. She has won a Narrative Magazine Poetry Prize, Common Good Books Poetry Prize, Poetry Box Editor’s Choice Chapbook Award, Bisexual Book Award, and others. Her work has been widely published in such journals as Alaska Quarterly, Valparaiso Poetry Review, ONE ART, American Life in Poetry, and anthologies such as How to Love the World and Poetry of Presence. She holds graduate degrees in Literature from Columbia University, and lives with her wife on the steep banks of the Connecticut River in New Hampshire.

Love in People, Not Things by Laura Foley

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Love in People, Not Things

When my mother died, she left behind
few things in her one room
assisted living space.

Some clothes, of course,
and a worn black leather purse.
In it, I discovered,

wrapped in shiny silver paper,
a chocolate, with a message inside,
repeated in five languages,

a fortune candy,
Italian dark chocolate
crisped with hazelnuts, so

I ate it.
Alone in a room emptied of her,
holding almost nothing she owned,

I read and re-read
her last message to me.

*

Laura Foley is the author of, most recently, Sledding the Valley of the Shadow, and Ice Cream for Lunch. She has won a Narrative Magazine Poetry Prize, Common Good Books Poetry Prize, Poetry Box Editor’s Choice Chapbook Award, Bisexual Book Award, and others. Her work has been widely published in such journals as Alaska Quarterly, Valparaiso Poetry Review, American Life in Poetry, ONE ART, and included in anthologies such as How to Love the World and Poetry of Presence. She holds graduate degrees in Literature from Columbia University, and lives with her wife on the steep banks of the Connecticut River in New Hampshire.

The Hawk and the Octopus by Laura Foley

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The Hawk and the Octopus

        for Brenda Phillips, in memory

A hawk flies in the blue sky she painted,
over a bright green house
I recognize as hers.

An oak tree shadows the yard,
the hawk’s shadow too small to see,
small as the tumor shadowing her brain.

A preying hawk and malignancy,
the oak tentacled, lobed,
dark as octopus ink,

shadowing a brain I recognize as hers—
until it belonged to shadows
we never imagined.

*

Laura Foley is the author of nine poetry collections. Sledding the Valley of the Shadow (Fernwood Press) is forthcoming in 2024. She has won a Narrative Magazine Poetry Prize, The Poetry Box Editor’s Choice Award, The Common Good Books Poetry Prize, the Bisexual Book Award, Atlanta Review’s Grand Prize and others.

Two Poems by Laura Foley

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My State

At daycare, she says, Sue serves us spoiled eggs.
Oh, you mean boiled?
No. Spoiled. And I don’t like them.

Later I ask Sue, who elucidates, Scrambled.

In the parking lot, we talk license plates.
Mine has a loon, she explains,
And yours is green.

Yes, yours is a loon because you’re from Maine.
Yes, Grandma, but I’m from License Plate too.

I squint into space,
trying to imagine the state of License Plate,
but find a mind of scrambled eggs.

*

Someone

I once lived on a great wide river,
a time of deep aloneness, after loss.
How soothing it was to watch waters passing,
sunlight reflected in circular currents,
a white moon cresting
above the shadowed mountain.
I miss the river, though not
the hushed quietness of that time,
the endless plumbing of depths
I never guessed, which nonetheless
led me to choose—a wife
calling me from another room,
as she is now, to come downstairs for tea,
steeped to the color of the river.

*

Laura Foley’s most recent collection is: It’s This (Fernwood Press, 2023). Her poems have won many awards and appeared in many journals such as Alaska Quarterly, Valparaiso, Poetry Society London, Atlanta Review, and included in anthologies such as: Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems, and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. Laura’s poems have been turned into choral music and performed in venues such as the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and Carnegie Hall in New York. She lives with her wife, Clara Giménez, and their two romping canines, among the hills of Vermont.

ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of March 2023

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~ ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of March 2023 ~

  1. John Amen
  2. Laura Foley
  3. Kaecey McCormick
  4. Carolyn Miller
  5. Karen Friedland
  6. Luke Johnson
  7. Bonnie Proudfoot
  8. Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
  9. Michelle Wiegers
  10. Laura Grace Weldon & Mary Ford Neal (tie!)

Let’s Go Out for Breakfast, I Say to Myself by Laura Foley

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Let’s Go Out for Breakfast, I Say to Myself

I rush my card for the famous poet’s birthday
to the biggest Post Office at eight on Monday
so it won’t arrive late,
card with a green bamboo jungle,
a panda bear looking content,
which I wrote reminded me of him.
At the hipster café, I order a latte,
but it’s bitter, the bagel too salty to eat.
I spend the morning on a stool,
watching strangers on the street,
March winds buffeting their eyes
with winter dust. At lunch I meet my beloved,
her teaching gig done,
but the cool taco truck’s closed,
Not enough staff, explains the handmade sign.
We make our hungry way home,
in separate cars,
and I stop at the railroad crossing.
Last November, her student backed onto the tracks,
didn’t see the oncoming train.
I pause at the makeshift shrine—
a wooden cross, piles of basketballs,
plastic flowers, teddy bears.
Though the postman told me the card will arrive late,
though the coffee was undrinkable,
the bagel inedible,
the taco place closed,
though everyone has dust in their eyes,
for one moment I saw it:
a single ash leaf lifting upward,
spiraling over the railroad tracks,
brown, but somehow catching the light,
so it gleamed in passing,
spinning out of sight.

*

Laura Foley is the author of eight poetry collections. Everything We Need: Poems from El Camino was released, in winter 2022. It’s This is due out in Spring 2023. Her poems have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, One Art Poetry, Poetry Society London, Crannog Magazine (Ireland), DMQ Review, Atlanta Review, Mason Street, JAMA, and many others. Her work has been included in many anthologies such as: Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems, Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection, and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. Laura lives with her wife, Clara Gimenez, among the hills of Vermont. http://www.laurafoley.net

Dust of Snow by Laura Foley

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Dust of Snow

I thought I was done
mourning war
learning to savor

a faceful of snow
from the shaken pine
without remembering

the water dripped
on my father’s head
his torture into a coma

surviving four years
in Japanese prison
to become my father

in the same war Stefan
escaped on skis
from Poland

across the Tatras into Lithuania
and then Russia
and became my husband

now long since gone
this dawn after snow
as the new war invades my mind

and sun lights a thin white line
rising from the chimney
of a peaceable slate gray house

where I live with my wife
on a wooded hill
but see the smoke

of bombed buildings
barely noticing how snow
dusts from the arms of a pine

drifts like a beautiful ghost
or an angel I wish
I could send to Ukraine.

*

Laura Foley is the author of eight poetry collections. Everything We Need: Poems from El Camino was released, in winter 2022. Her poems have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, One Art Poetry, Poetry Society London, Crannog Magazine (Ireland), DMQ Review, Atlanta Review, Mason Street, JAMA, and many others. Her work has been included in many anthologies such as: Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems, Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection, and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. Laura lives with her wife, Clara Gimenez, among the hills of Vermont. www.laurafoley.net

Five Poems by Laura Foley

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Then

The human world
kicks you in the head
again and again—

so you must seek beyond the No,
the song of dried beech leaves
ringing in the brittle wind,

a hollow tone to shiver you
like a tuning fork,
so the healing bell inside yourself

will resound, in quietness,
with Yes
and Yes and Yes.

* 

Full Tide

We walked downhill
to the beach, her hand in mine,
small step, after small step.
She said Hi to the doggie on the leash,
Hi Mommy, to a woman passing
on the street, Hi Daddy, to a bearded man.
On the sand, she stared transfixed,
at the water, the slight waves,
the tide not yet pulling out.
She looked up, toward a flap of wings.
Bird, I said, pointing at the seagull,
and she mimicked, Bird,
then turned her gaze back,
to the waves’ slow slapping.
Later I sat, looking at trees below me,
a hint of haze burning off the far bay,
the world busy working and sailing,
waking, while I sat waiting as Evie napped,
that quiet Maine morning,
the full tide of grandmotherhood,
lapping my shore.

*
Breakfast Conversation

I’ve placed her favorites—
fresh raspberries, string cheese,
a glass of milk in the giraffe cup—
on her high chair tray.
As she munches away,
swinging her short legs,
she asks thoughtfully,
Granma, are you
pooping?
I continue my bite of oatmeal,
take a sip of coffee,
respond—No darling.
How about you?
She isn’t either…
as we both wonder
what to say next.

*

After I Attend a Talk by the Somali Refugee

Migrating south for my annual holiday,
I’m at ease on the bus to the ferry,
where I will cross a wide bay,
relax at the sea.
Wheels rumble beneath me,
landscapes unfold,
like a dream of plenty—
yellow lilies in a field,
gardens rich with eggplants,
tomatoes, raspberries,
reminding me of home,
where my love,
a woman to whom I’m legally married,
awaits my return.
Soon I will breathe salt sea air,
while winds from another continent
ruffle my hair like one beloved,
as I delight in ocean surf,
gulls’ raucous calling,
the freedom of movement
others die for.

*

It Matters

that Mary Oliver woke early,
and walked along the bay, as morning sun
tore the sheets of darkness from the sky.
It matters that she carried a notebook,
and cared to look into a kingfisher’s soul,
to dig in wet sand for clams,
in which she later tasted the salt sea,
erupting in her mouth, like sex—
that she let the soft body of her body love
what it loved, which was Molly.
It matters that she loved a woman.
It matters that we each wake
to stride our own snow dunes,
finding in each day something of value,
even the last ash leaf hanging on a winter limb,
shivering a bit, then falling into stillness,
over and over to lose ourselves
into something larger,
something better. It matters that I clutch
my stack of her books—those fields of light—
now that her body has gone
into the cottage of darkness.

*

Laura Foley is the author of seven poetry collections. Why I Never Finished My Dissertation received a starred Kirkus Review, was among their top poetry books of 2019, and won an Eric Hoffer Award. Her collection It’s This is forthcoming from Salmon Press in 2021. Her poems have won numerous awards, and national recognition—read frequently by Garrison Keillor on The Writers Almanac; appearing in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry. Laura lives with her wife, Clara Gimenez, among the hills of Vermont. www.laurafoley.net

A Hot Day in Madrid by Laura Foley

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A Hot Day in Madrid

We return to her mother,
same apartment six floors up,
elevator so rickety, I walk the unlit stairs.

Her husband’s old coat
hangs in the hallway closet,
forty years past his death,

the electric bill’s in his name,
his watch in her drawer
no longer keeps time.

The same city grime
coats windows, yellowed shades,
faded wallpaper.

She pours cold water into the old fan,
asks for stories of our forty days
walking across Spain,

the cathedrals, towns,
beaches she remembers,
a level of walking her body

has long forgotten, the way
she has not stayed the same,
the ways we have changed.

*

Laura Foley is the author of seven poetry collections. Why I Never Finished My Dissertation received a starred Kirkus Review, was among their top poetry books of 2019, and won an Eric Hoffer Award. Her collection It’s This is forthcoming from Salmon Press in 2021. Her poems have won numerous awards, and national recognition—read frequently by Garrison Keillor on The Writers Almanac; appearing in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry. Laura lives with her wife, Clara Gimenez, among the hills of Vermont. http://www.laurafoley.net

Radiance by Laura Foley

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Radiance

I remember when I stopped
not believing in God, it sent me
to my knees pleading,
hands clasped like a penitent
or a medieval saint transported
to the modern age,
struck by my mother’s stroke.
A Litany flowed through me,
of faintly remembered prayers,
growing as I spoke,
my knees impervious to the hard tile,
cramped between sink and bath.
Yet, when I opened the door,
I feigned no inner change,
knew my husband’s unknowingness
would try to eclipse my newfound light,
turn brilliance to a dull watered gray
with his scoffing gaze, the planet
of his non-belief
blocking me from radiating.
I didn’t wish to rejoin him in the cave
where I once found comfort,
watching shadows dance.
It was the start
of the end of us, the beginning
of my brighter epoch.

 

 

Laura Foley is the author of seven poetry collections. Why I Never Finished My Dissertation received a starred Kirkus Review, was among their top poetry books of 2019, and won an Eric Hoffer Award. Her collection It’s This is forthcoming from Salmon Press in 2021. Her poems have won numerous awards, and national recognition—read frequently by Garrison Keillor on The Writers Almanac; appearing in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry. Laura lives with her wife, Clara Gimenez, among the hills of Vermont. www.laurafoley.net