Tree by Louis Gallo

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Tree

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I am watching men in hard hats and chain saws

amputate limb by limb, before they destroy

the trunk, a most magnificent oak tree

across the street—for no apparent reason.

I have admired this tree for decades, the

tallest in the neighborhood, even the city,

and no doubt hundreds of years old.

It must surely rise over three hundred feet,

though I am not much at guessing distance.

It’s wide as a massive ziggurat, and who knows

how deeply its roots burrow into the earth.

I imagine it reaching into the sky to touch

Orion, that it is in fact a sublunary Orion

itself, an Orion being butchered

for no reason, for no reason, for no reason.

But this is the way it goes with the sacred.

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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. He teaches at Radford University in Radford, Virginia.

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Old Bones by Lou Gallo

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Old Bones

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When I swivel my neck now I hear

cartilage popping and although it feels good

I think instantly of old Hasdrubal of Carthage

leading elephants across mountains

and I think of the bones in our back yard

on Columbus Street that my dog Spottie

buried, dug up, buried again, sucking

out that sweet marrow, and I think too

of the catacombs in Mexico City

that terrified me as a child—and

still terrify me—and of course who could

not think of Ozymandias . . .

oh I think lots of things because

how intimate is ossification and better

gather the memories while you can

before the neck becomes less a conduit

and more a fossil, not grainy like Lot’s wife

but solid, I like to think, marble,

a work of art some sculptor might carve

into a skylark or turtle or tiny peacock

that winds up on the family mantle.

At the moment I stare at the meat

placed before me in the Ancient Steak House

and can’t help poking at the bone

with my fork fancying it might emit

a signal of sorts explaining the difference

between its situation now and before when it

lived inside a cow . . . and I think of angels

and ghosts and sprites and how one

might thrive without the bones

always left behind, eroding into dust

eventually, the skull and teeth and

fingernails and ribs and elbows,

the structure collapsed,  the thinking

over, the old bones, old bones.

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Louis Gallo’s 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 Change, 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.  He teaches at Radford University in Radford, Virginia.

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2 Poems by Louis Gallo

Marc Chagall The Soul of Elpenor (L’ame d’Elpenor)

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Getting Wasted With Elpenor

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Pretty bored last night so I decided

to descend to the underworld

hoping to meet the great Achilles

or Agamemnon or, you know, one

of them, even that mad Ajax would do.

Instead I ran into Elpenor sulking

on a lonely, miasmal crossroad.

Seems no one had buried him yet—

remember he’s the dopey kid

who got drunk atop Circe’s roof

and fell off and broke his neck

(one or two lines in The Odyssey).

He’d talk to anybody who drank

the blood, begging, pleading for burial

so his soul could cease its wandering.

Well, I wasn’t much help

so back up on a roof (Circe’s again?),

we wound up getting cheap drunk

on Gallo wine–

and once more Elpenor slid off

to still another death, another

broken neck.  He looked so sad

as he peered at me from the ground

though I had already explained

that I lacked the power to salvage

either his body or soul.  I sang

from my vantage–Ray Charles’

rendition of “Born to Lose,”

never quite deciding who ranks

as the greater losers:

hopeless, broken blokes like Elpenor

or those of us who can’t restore them.

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Dream

I tried to tell her she did not smell

like mosquito repellant

but I could tell by her frown

and the way she flicked her hair

that she didn’t believe me.

She kept sniffing at her arms

in a kind of minor horror.

I took her hand and tried to

pull her into the house

but she resisted:  “How can I

come in when I smell like poison?”

she whimpered.

“Smell me,” she demanded,

“all over,” as she proceeded

to remove her clothing.

What a dilemma.

If I told her she smelled

like champagne or the attar

of roses, she would accuse

me of lying;

if I told her she did indeed

smell like mosquito repellant

she would go berserk–

for this was one clean woman.

In the end I offered to rub her down

with denatured alcohol

(which smells horrible)

to remove every trace of repellant.

She liked the idea

and followed me into the house,

the screen door banging behind us.

I smeared the wretched alcohol

all over her flesh and rubbed it in.

Then I carried her to the tub

and washed it off with Ivory.

Now I’m boiling water for

sassafras tea as she lies back

on the sofa, smiling, purified,

ablated, redeemed.

And I tell you, I’m smiling too.

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Louis Gallo’s 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 Change, 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.  He teaches at Radford University in Radford, Virginia.

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