John Gallaher ~ Five Poems

What If Gravity Isn’t a Fundamental Force?

A friend of mine wakes from a coma and for a second
I get con­fused between the spelling of coma and com­ma. Hesitation
is every­where. Now it’s a year lat­er, and I for­get which friend
it was. Is it OK to ask? Hey, which of you was in a coma last year?
It breaks a piece of my mind. But there
are a lot of oth­er pieces. Like movie plots. A lot of those. And the times
I admit I need glass­es, but I’m putting it off, and here I am
dri­ving a car at night. That’s fun­ny, right?
It’s a Trick or Treat bag of soap bub­bles. Cars steam by,
easy col­or­ful soap bub­bles. So who needs glass­es? I have abstract
expres­sion­ism. For sci­ence, I’m sit­ting here
with a pen­cil a quar­ter inch from the bridge of my nose,
feel­ing it tingle.
Maybe it’s my third eye or I’m grow­ing sonar.

*

If I tilt my head back and look kind of down my face,
it’s almost nor­mal, though no one
likes me walk­ing around that way. Each car com­ing at me
has four head­lights, which isn’t usually
a prob­lem, but then again,
is that a motor­cy­cle or car, and which lane
are they actu­al­ly in? A lot of things can be inferred, though. Like a table.
I don’t need to see all its legs to under­stand tableness.
And I’m sit­ting in this car and it’s most­ly just car things.
Simone Weil says grav­i­ty is the law of necessity,
and grace the law of escape. Žižek says the real
is what always arrives too late, like a small traf­fic jam
of author­i­ty, like wait­ing in my car
for the light to change but I change instead. 

~

On Flight

Why is there a bird in my garage? The bird appears
to be ask­ing the same ques­tion. There’s rain and wind,
and I pulled the blinds on the side of the house,
so they’ve stopped fly­ing into them. Like a desert in a jar
on a sink­ing ship: things are going to seem to be look­ing up
for a bit, then it’s going to be very bad. Traffic lights
are flash­ing. Emergency vehi­cles just went by.
Then the oth­er way. And I feel the same way. So does the bird,
hav­ing a hard time try­ing to start my lawnmower.
Yeah, I strug­gle with it too. I feel like giv­ing up
some­times. I’m afraid the bird is think­ing the same thing.
There are two birds in the yard on a bare limb of the oak
I always call a maple, because that’s how I roll.
They also seem keen­ly inter­est­ed in how this is going to resolve.

*

The prob­lem of yearn­ing is we can only pause. I open the door
to the garage three maybe four times a week
dur­ing the win­ter, because that’s where the recy­cling bins are,
but I don’t have to go all the way in. What plights
await. It’s not pie bak­ing, is it? Skydiving? Somewhere right now a woman
is stand­ing at a win­dow watch­ing the last light leave a spoon.
Someone is fold­ing a menu and will place no order. The fold itself
is the order. Somewhere a man
is explain­ing some­thing com­plete­ly wrong
to a dog who already knows bet­ter, and sev­er­al miles away from them
a teenag­er is falling in love with a song that will ruin every oth­er song
for­ev­er. All of us died years ago
and none of us have noticed yet. Each emp­ty room is pay­ing atten­tion to you.
And I always dreamed of being the weather.

~

Disasterville Cognoscenti

“Where did every­one go?” is the first thing I notice, out in pub­lic, pre­tend­ing I’m
house­wares, blown into the yard.
Then, the wasp nest is act­ing sus­pi­cious­ly. Was it ever fun
that when you went out­side things just sort of happened?
Maybe as a kid? I always meant to bank
some of that. And my con­cepts of this pile of sticks isn’t pass­ing as an alibi,
not even when I say it’s peo­ple, or doll peo­ple, or a nice bracelet.
“Hi friend,” I say to it any­way, because it’s good
to have friends. “Aw, shit, there goes all hope,” it says,
as the grass sud­den­ly springs up sev­er­al inch­es over them. Until then
I was just play­ful, but now I feel I have to be careful
where I stand, as there’s no telling who’s next.
I can feel some of my parts leav­ing already, and the rest start­ing to yearn
to join them or have them return, which they will not do.
A kite has crashed into me, in this wind, and wrapped me all up in string.

*

Maybe if some­one gave the pigeon a can­dy bar, it would leave.
And the cows at the Kansas City air­port look up,
won­der­ing who approved the run­way light­ing. They know something
about wait­ing. Their eyes are filled with departures.
As sleep comes over the king­dom like a gov­ern­ment help line,
its hold music Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians.” Hypnotic,
bureau­crat­ic, and strange­ly sin­cere, and everyone
dream­ing they’re Spartacus
until the bill arrives. I think I will sim­ply go. As a kind of audition.
Slip out the back, Jack. The moon is tat­tooed on a bird’s wing.
I’m cheer­ful about it, most­ly, though I’ve thrown my heart
and kept pic­tures. Tomorrow’s weather
looks a lot like today’s almost all the time, and then
we get sea­sons. And I’ve spent all day won­der­ing what to do all day.

~

Then What Takes Its Place

The blue line on the map screen keeps wan­der­ing off the road, drifting
into pas­tures. The cows seem hap­py for the company.
The towns are all named “Rebuffering.” The king
of devo­tion pulls up next to me at a stoplight.
“I saw you at the gas sta­tion back there,” the king says. “You
were doing it all wrong.” Was this the order of func­tions? The neighbors
stand­ing on their lawns hold­ing rakes that keep turn­ing into “Make a U‑turn”
and back into rakes? We want to be hap­py. It goes
into the com­ment phase. Three breaths and I’ll be ready. I’ve read a lot
about dis­solv­ing the ego, but they nev­er mentioned
what would be tak­ing its place. I sit in my car, hovering
over a small lake. I think of every­one I’ve ever loved.
I won­der if they were real then, and if they still are, somewhere.
“You have arrived at your des­ti­na­tion,” the map says, almost gentle.

*

I’m dri­ving my car along the bot­tom of a lake
that was a town, flood­ed to make a reser­voir, mail
float­ing from the post office,
police offi­cer in the inter­sec­tion, let­ting a string of chil­dren pass
on their way to school. The school bell
con­tin­u­al­ly ring­ing. It’s been ring­ing for years, the same
chil­dren in cir­cles back and forth across the intersection.
A small black dog is leap­ing at its fence with joy.
I’m real­iz­ing I’m not much of a delib­er­ate thinker, and I catch myself
some­times get­ting caught up on “Should I have said ‘delib­er­a­tive’
just then?” and the thought’s gone.
I was onto some­thing for a moment, and it start­ed to feel like counting.
Like, oh look, I’ve got­ten to the end of the prob­lem! It’s one.
And just like that the swans start singing.

~

Antipodes

I’m dig­ging this hole in the cen­ter of the liv­ing room rug. When I get to the bottom,
it will be the Indian Ocean flood­ing the house. On a globe
the short­est dis­tance between two points
is a math prob­lem I’ve nev­er been good at. Like this me and you.
Like any lover, my goal was to be the one to view Athena and live.
Like any lover, my goal was a straight line from TV Guide to your bed.
The self recedes, though I can still feel, some days, I’m a passable
descrip­tion of “pleased to meet you.” Pleased as punch. As
rock ’em sock ’em robots. We were a per­fect match, you thought
every­thing was fun­ny and I had a bro­ken heart, just like Jesse James
and King James and James Dean.
It’s a dio­ra­ma on a table viewed by mis­er­able angels.
Like you’ve got rhine­stones and I’ve got a glue gun.
Just like Athena nev­er real­ly helped any­one either. And now the floor’s all wet.

*

Maybe the uni­verse is sad­dle-shaped or we’re inside a black hole. See how easily
one can say things? Like “Think out­side the box” or “I love you.”
Like the amper­sand in “Thoughts & Prayers.” Noir versions
of this lit­tle house and dri­ve­way. It’s a very tight space
in a spot­light. Look, it can go even tighter. I’m sor­ry, I was young
and had these bad ideas about love. I’d be young again
with these same ideas, if I could. This is how one
walks through walls. This is how one appears in the liv­ing room
and the park and then the ocean
flood­ing their sleep­er sofa. It sparkles.
You can go sev­er­al months for­get­ting to breathe, and then remembering,
but it’s all you can do, plac­ing your hand
on some­one, and let­ting it rest. “I will do anything,”
we say, and only lat­er find out what that means.

~

John Gallaher’s most recent book is My Life in Brutalist Architecture, a poem-mem­oir on adop­tion. His eighth col­lec­tion, Radio Good Luck, will be out in 2028 from Four Way Books, along with a chap­book, HINGE, in 2026, from Sixth Finch. Gallaher has also edit­ed two col­lec­tions, with poems appear­ing in American Poetry Review, Poetry, New England Review, Colorado Review, The Best American Poetry, among oth­ers. Gallaher lives in north­west Missouri and co-edits the Laurel Review.