My Life in Brutalist Architecture #1

John Gallaher

     My neighbor to the left had a stroke a couple years ago. It didn’t look 
     like he was going to make it, and then he made it. I’m watching him 
     now from my window as he makes his slow way across his yard 
     with some tree branches that fell in last night’s storm. Three steps.  
     Wait. Three steps. It’s a hard slog. Watching, I want to pitch in.  
     And we do, at such times, wanting to help. But on the other hand, 
     it’s good to be as physical as possible in recovery. Maybe this is part 
     of his rehab. Maybe this is doctor’s orders: DO YARDWORK.  
     And here comes his wife across the yard anyway, to give a hand 
     with a large branch. She’s able to quickly overtake him, and she folds 
     into the process smoothly, no words between them that I can make out.  
     It’s another part of what makes us human, weighing the theory of mind, 
     watching each other struggle or perform, anticipating each other’s 
     thoughts, as the abject hovers uncannily in the background, threatening 
     to break through the fragile borders of the self. “What’s it like to be 
     a bat?” we ask. The bats don’t respond. How usually, our lives 
     unfold at the periphery of catastrophes happening to others. I’m 
     reading, while my neighbor struggles, that the squirrel population 
     in New England is in the midst of an unprecedented boom. A recent 
     abundance of acorns is the reason for this surge in squirrel populations, 
     most particularly in New Hampshire. They’re everywhere, being 
     squirrely, squirreling acorns away. We call it “Squirrelnado” because 
     it’s all around us, circling, and dangerous, and kind of funny. Language 
     springs from the land, and through our imagination we become 
     human. They’re back in the house now. We name the things we see, 
     or they name themselves into our experience, whichever, and then 
     we use those names for things we don’t understand, what we can’t 
     express. Wind becomes spirit becomes ghost. Mountain becomes 
     god. The land springs up before us. It shakes us and pushes us over.

In a Landscape: IV


Now the scene changes, we say, and the next few years 
are quiet.  It’s another curse, the inverse of the “interesting times”
the Chinese were said to go on so about.  Nevertheless, there it is, 
as the emptiness needs a something in order to be defined as empty, 
which means we spend the next few years talking about other years, 
as if that’s what’s important.  Maybe that is what’s important.  It was terrible, 
the hospital stay.  The children.

John Gallaher

2013

Advice to Passengers

There is a man, there is a woman,
and there is a child. 

Their faces too plain,
their mouths too wide.

It's a grim business.  You can feel it piling up
however quiet you refuse to be.

Watch them.

They woke up one morning
and their hands were all rubber.

"How can you hold me?"
they asked.
"How can I feel you?"

They woke up 
and their voices were coming through
on the radio,
saying, "I should've warned you."

It would seem easy enough 
to warn someone.

They are at the window
in the sunlight.

Step back a bit.

Don't forget to thank them
for their time.

John Gallaher

2011

In the Little Book of Guesses

I’ll make you up from out 
of the living rooms we face, 
equal parts singing gate 

and people we knew once,  
in biographical order.  Equal lengths 

investiture, and the sun came out 
and it was bright in my eyes.  

The room is dark behind 
the flaring particles.  The day 
is twenty years ago 

and Tuesday.  I did not mean 
to leave us there with nothing, 

as I was saying car rides  
for wonderful.  It hardly matters.  Unequal parts 
wanting to mean something 

and frosted glass.  Whose cigarette 
in the plaid ashtray?

John Gallaher

2007

Poems

My Life in Brutalist Architecture #1

More by this poet

In a Landscape: IV

Advice to Passengers

In the Little Book of Guesses

Poems

Page submenu block

My Life in Brutalist Architecture #1

More by this poet

Newsletter Sign Up