Shamala Gallagher
Untitled (Night-Eyes)
room of windows
glittered with soapscum,
it will be over
.
.
.
calm yourself to look
into the blue pain
pain that builds a window
to itself
wheel of night-eyes
salt of unspeaking
it will be over
.
.
.
mile-wracked garden
wailing soaked hem at dusk
waiting nameless keeper of veins
it will be over
.
.
.
.
white winking
white perforation
bitten daymoons of nail
.
.
..
..
..
black gleaner
black coalless volt
.
..
....
..
.
fluke of the body,
straw flute
it will be over
Substance of Questions
I hope you still want me
white ache in the orchid
slim-limbed bugs stalking elsewhere
want me still I need it
white bone I held to the light
others will come after
and so much in the world still
but no one left anymore
in the pinegreen waste of thought
no trash I have left
not the speaking green fountain
from the other place
just the rainshaken house
I hope you still want me
who looks out of the world still
bare ones who were other than this
white ache now the flower shrivels
why you shrink to yourself
all the white scraps of thinking
blank who knows how to speak
no one in the pinegreen waste
of remembering no one
in the rattled grit from
the leaving machine
others were always staring
still the rainshaken dusk
do you want me still
Spoken to No One Present
thinking of
you
in the
shaking
night
I seemed
a poor
excuse
so I grew a tooth
in the
seed
of my throat
gentle freak
with the
skin of crushed
dark petals
scarlet
thief
I wanted
to own
the dark theater
and the crumbs
of silver
paper
in the
aisle
but this is all
they would leave me
here
boor who waits
near the
caving of
others
come touch
the small
of my back
jester I met
in the alleys
of worry
you stole my glasses
I have a weak mind
couldn't look
at the face
of the storm
days you wake
and are worthless
who else would
wait there
like that
who else
in the umber ploy of breathing
I pound at
your door
you are
with
someone
else drunk and
unraveled
how many years
to make
checkmarks for the
shame of
wanting
but I
want it still
Notes in Lieu of Sleep
awake means
you live in a blank
field where fear
flowers like empty
palms. teenager,
midnight, Id sneak
onto the null suburb
roads in my
parents' car.
no one muttered
anything. safe
means no one
can bring you
the news
if one day a sudden
bad thing flowers
from my vein I will
have been awaiting
it for years. staring
into my skin, waiting
and thinking of poison
in the red hollow
if you look quick
and sideways
at a cat eye
you can see
through. clear
through to
nothing. alone
in the house
I start to doubt
the maker of
people: all
warped and
scraped early,
nudged up
into twisting
stalks and
tangled with
other stalks
and then
ripped out
eyes grow open around
me in the heat. mine
echotalk of self to self
look we fought our way through the bland
dust tunnels of the past
to get here. now we are always here
once we walked
through the nightheat
black creak of crickets
the night breakably rare