John Gallaher is the author of the books of poetry, Gentlemen in Turbans, Ladies in Cauls (Spuyten Duyvil, 2001), The Little Book of Guesses, winner of the Levis Poetry Prize, from Four Way Books, and Map of the Folded World, from The University of Akron Press. He is currently co-editor of The Laurel Review and GreenTower Press.
What We're Up Against
On the way home from the funeral
we stopped for lunch.
Lunch was like the singing. Lunch
where we all began standing around
each other's buildings, eating,
and bringing more buildings with us.
When the air started thinning,
we sang that living was like this. We sang
for the ambulance
in front of the house. We waved.
The doctors stood around
mumbling
and checking off racing forms.
You breathed out and out
over the back wall you made
out of Coke bottles.
Someone in the other room
was playing a piano.
What are we going to do now,
we asked, placing sandwiches
in front of the empty seat
over and over,
until that's all there was.
When One Has Lived Too Long Among Other People
Because life is a puzzle
isn't it, there is a person framed
by a window, stuck
on repeat.
Once they carried the entertaining
sunset around. Look, isn't this
entertaining?
And look, isn't it your body
that does the dreaming, the settled sunsets
stuck on repeat?
I am writing a note, I am not
falling down. I am writing X
of windows. I am thinking
there is no more.
That these are larger boxes
in the city, stuck on repeat.
We call it the apology of.
Or we call it the apothecary
landscape of.
I'm standing in a hospital room,
dusting you, for days.
If everything could only be cleaner.
When one has spent a long time
among others, the windows
are these little windows.
Here is a flower stuck on repeat,
to cross the summer rooms, to write
the summer notes.