Three poems by John Gallagher

• Laudate Dominum
• Lit stalks stitch patterns over moss-mute boughs,
• The patched procession of winter and early dawn.

• A dormant vine’s engrafted web soon glows,
• Emblazoned tongues along the runged oration.

• O distant fire, stirred to renew in rose
• The ice-crowned crevice and the gelid grain,

• Remind us of that language thawed earth knows,
• Roots spelling pulp-white limbs in loam again.

• Severance
• It’s not unlike the killing of rabbits, quick
• And brutal, and it leaves a lingering sick
• Feeling that takes some time to overcome.
• Harvest days on the farm my chest grew numb

• With the work, until we could finally freeze
• The meat. Even then the hint of unease
• Was there, the general gloom that wants to stay
• When any mortal life takes another’s away.

• And you really never get used to that,
• The whiff of finality in every set
• Task and familiar rhythm of labor’s give
• And take. The shock that comes, bolt from above,

• As soon as “terminated” settles in.
• At some point, while the details rattle on,
• No matter how quickly done, and with tact,
• Somewhere in the background still looms the fact

• You see in the face turned to ash, then red.
• The air drips adrenaline. Each word that’s said
• Or not said trembles in the throat and hands.
• At last, tears and outrages past, the victim stands

• And turns not quite sure where the door is, like
• Lazarus still bound, unable to speak,
• Staggering back into the light he had
• Almost completely forgotten in death’s cold shade.

• The Car Salesman
• Man minus the Machine is a slave; Man plus the Machine is a freeman.
• Henry Ford

• Angelic metal measures out the light
• In angled shafts. They sharpen the contoured forms
• Of cars sweating out this summer’s afternoon.
• It’s show-time again. Cheeks of leather. Bright
• Eyes shift like mirrors in the sun, and swarms
• Of honeycombed words purr along the promising tune.

• The familiar theme of perfection is renewed
• In ergonomic features, each designed
• To ease the weight of pilgrimage with all
• The comforts of a home. And so, the road
• Transforms in his magician’s gesturing hand
• From tired commute into the elusive goal.

• I can almost smell the apples and the hay
• Through those windows when they glide like butter down
• With barely a touch of my finger at the door.
• And miles of rolling wheels beneath the play
• Of well-oiled pistons brush with the breath of a gown
• As he steers me into the cool shade of the store.

John Gallagher holds a B.A. and M.A. in English from the University of Dallas. He and his family live in the Northwest.