john gallaher
Where the Carpet Matches the Curtains
Things are scattered across the purple table
where the young girl is drawing.
We’re going through tunnels first,
then over bridges
to where a hawk drives a rabbit from its hole
into the waiting family of hawks.
Then the line-drawn house. Line-drawn
flowers. “I remember this,”
she’s saying. Or she’s having them say.
We looked so closely
we couldn’t find anything. We walked around the house
several times. We called her name
and then ours. We called the trees
and watched the hawks.
The figures step into a space. The space
will be filled in with blue and with yellow
when I lose my way in the story.
Then the line-drawn car, stick figures carrying circles
on top of circles, maybe in needlepoint,
or next to a Christmas gift on a shelf of figurines in a tableau
under which we lift our glasses
as the crack in the ceiling opens
and the dead come pouring out.
I Accidentally Touched My Head
One is never completely safe. I repeat that,
as the chirping continues outside
between the crickets and the birds. It just goes
on and on. I absent-mindedly
touched my head just as the song was playing, and the lyrics
were going “I accidentally
touched my head.” The birds
keep reopening and reopening. And it’s the late
afternoon. Something less or greater than. I can stir
the coffee until the coffee seems to be hoping
for a little more time. How long,
I might think, for the sound of the birds
to sound like birds? Weather is the last real thing we say
back and forth, like talking with a friend
about next summer, while outside
these two parades are passing close to each other
sharing route tips. You go this way.
I’ll go that. Your friend is ill. Your friend
is dying, and we’ll meet again, as I just decided
to get as quiet as possible
under the chirping that’s beginning to sound
like shuffling cards. This is not, I hear,
the garden party we were invited to,
or that we thought we were invited to. Look at us
with the evening all over us
like a bowl of milk. 27 degrees to the left
of dinner. What can we possibly do
or say for ourselves? So why not talk about
next summer? How loud can we be,
and how selfish? Or, because this is not the time
for curiosity, we could debate the difficulties of knowing
until we start to understand ourselves
and the whole thing evaporates, dragging its three heads
off into the darkness. And look,
they’re bringing the planets back this way.
