LOUIS GALLO - POEMS

Two volumes of Louis Gallo’s poetry, Crash and Clearing the Attic, will be published by Adelaide in the near future.  A third, Archaeology, has been published by Kelsay Books; Kelsay will also publish a fourth volume, Scherzo Furiant, in the near future.  His work has appeared or will shortly appear in Wide Awake in the Pelican State (LSU anthology), Southern Literary Review, Fiction Fix, Glimmer Train, Hollins Critic,, Rattle, Southern Quarterly, Litro, New Orleans Review, Xavier Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Missouri Review, Mississippi Review, Texas Review, Baltimore Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, The Ledge, storySouth,  Houston Literary Review, Tampa Review, Raving Dove, The Journal (Ohio), Greensboro Review,and many others.  Chapbooks include The Truth Changes, The Abomination of Fascination, Status Updates and The Ten Most Important Questions. He is the founding editor of the now defunct journals, The Barataria Review and Books:  A New Orleans Review.  His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize several times. He is the recipient of an NEA grant for fiction.  He teaches at Radford University in Radford, Virginia.

LADYBUG ON THE LAMP SHADE FRINGE
​

My first thought when I espied her clinging
To a decorative strand of the deco shade
Was revulsion, my first instinct to pinch
Her between my fingers and fling her
Into the box elder outside--
No insects in the house, disgusting.
But, as I prepared the assault, I noticed
How beautiful she was and how adamantly
She clung to that thread as if some ladybug
Lifeline for survival in this unnatural place.
An alien guest in my house from another kingdom!
So I turned off the lamp to avoid exposing her
To excess heat and bid her stay put
For as long as she so desired.
The next day she remained fixed in place
As if glued there, and I did nudge her off
Into my palm.  She could not survive 
In the house.  I did not have to fling her
Into the bush; she spread her tiny wings
And flew toward the center, overjoyed.
May you prosper, guest, and remember
That lampshade that attracted you
Which you probably mistook 
For a strange, weird spear of grass.

​

FLUCTUATIONS IN THE PRICE OF COAL TAR DURING RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH
​

It arose as if from the grave while I struggled to sleep,
The title of an essay assigned in a history class
Decades ago, a black, smoldering remnant
Of an otherwise forgotten semester, this useless,
Distasteful relic which should have remained buried,
Having no bearing either then or now, having 
No bearing ever for anybody aside from a professor
Or two anchored to minutiae and joyless enterprise.
Imagine the pain, that fine print accompanied
By graphs and charts and scales and, no doubt,
Spider webs.  Tossing such a stale bread crumb
Out to Freshmen treading water, hungry for insight,
Not trivia, mouths agape, starving, bewildered.
Fluctuations!  We should have risen up, demanded
Toynbee and Herodotus, the titans, give us Gibbon,
Not this naval lint, this loose thread from a button.
He threatened a quiz, had a hard-assed reputation,
So we went blind, suffered every paragraph,
Learned nothing worth knowing, specks 
And smidgens.  When that term ended
I sped out of History like a comet burning out
Though now, a universe later, I suspect I missed 
Something.
 

LAST LAP
​

He strains to remember the early, dizzying pace,
Much less the very first, the sliding his feet 
Into cleated Nikes (did Nikes exist then?), 
The gunshot and explosive projectile
off a runner’s block, the what-seemed-then
illusory finishing line, so distant, unimaginable,
so ludicrous, how he leapt certain hurdles
with birdlike finesse, crashed into others,
spent time limping, once or twice flat on his back
in the gravel, the scrapes, blood, sprained bones . . .
the ever-widening circles as he sped forth,
he, ahead of all the others until they began
to overtake him, his exertion flagging,
the lure of a prize or trophy diminished, 
the very idea of triumph now undistinguishable
from defeat, the comrades who dropped out early
or disappeared or veered off into other pastures--
he wonders why he treads on, the tortoise now,
that target illusory as ever, his intent in question,
the circles so widened that the entire past,
that scrimmage way back, vanishes in mist
with each new step, the steps themselves sinking
into quicksand or peat bog, or frozen solid.
Alone on the track, the others way ahead
Or far behind, he cries, purpose, purpose,
What is the purpose?  knowing all the while
That even purpose no longer matters,
Purpose, purpose, fool’s gold, pyrite,
Joker in the deck, land minds in the trajectory,
Dynamite in the Nikes.

​