Today by Lou Gallo

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Today by Lou Gallo

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I stand beside the Forester between

its door and interior as I wait for my daughters

to return from inside the pharmacy

where they will be administered their second doses

of vaccine.

We had broken out the old iPod and at this moment

Aerosmith’s “Walking in the Sand” blasts from the speakers.

What ever happened to that girl that I once knew . . .

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To my right across the street a chaos of buzzards

tears into the flesh of a dead groundhog

as church gongs from the steeple to my left,

the sinister path, resound,

rippling the very air and drowning out

all other sounds in the neighborhood. The buzzards

couldn’t care less and seem to be dancing

to a song I once uploaded onto my iPod

as they finish off the remains of the rodent

that has now practically disappeared

as if had never existed, as if had never lived.

Something both profane and holy

here at once—

A vulture Eucharist . . . take and eat.

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When we’re done we take a spin up Prospect

to gaze at the house where Cat and I once lived

before we married

                seems like the other day

before the girls were born, before now.

I thought it important to show the house to them

although I cannot explain why.

A bit of history here, a bit there,

the way things vanish and yet remain.

How we devour the entrails of the past.

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Four volumes of Louis Gallo’s poetry, Archaeology, Scherzo Furiant, Crash and Clearing the Attic, are now available. Why is there Something Rather than Nothing? and Leeway & Advent will be published soon.  His work appears in Best Short Fiction 2020. A novella, “The Art Deco Lung,” will soon be published in Storylandia.  He is the recipient of an NEA grant for fiction.  He teaches at Radford University in Radford, Virginia.

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