Some late time

The Empty Bed

There’s the immediate moment after the line between light and shadow has been exhaled and the thousand brilliant things you might have spoken or thought have already been said by those with more eloquence and measure.

The empty bed holds the late sun and the trees sing you outside to pass beneath the dappling to breathe a twilight that will live but once in your sighs. She was like this. And it will be she who will know your last leaving.



In the silence that follows, only the dry leaf of life forgetting to stop for any longer than it needs to give reason to the wind, response to that which must always remain invisible and unutterable.

Some late time, I will give over my eyes to the gazing of it, look beyond the empty walls into the center of what was a star to find you there, worlds away with another who can company that world for you and I will be thrown back into the void from whence we came just to lose one another all over again.

Joseph Gallo
August 9, 2007

The atoms of my lips

There Was You

There was the realm of your shoulders,
the pale avenues that broadened across
the bones that held for me so much, so
much. The empire of your throat, pulsing
with barrows of sun and blood the songs
that rested there each time you thought
of me merely. The bastions of your breasts,
bound beneath the believing and the lie that
lies at its very heart. Am I to split the atoms
of my lips again for this, tear asunder all
I have already despaired in the destruction
of paper gods whose names were lost in
the fire that bred them, the tongues that
found praise in their flammable blasphemes?
I cannot surrender to your country, the borders
will not have me, hence I am expatriate and
cross them thus with a word and a wing and
a wound, a deep unscabbable worldly wound.

Joseph Gallo
August 15, 2007

The faintest color

Woman On The Left

A certain menace in the eyes, the fork of no concern
belies wherein a worm or hook might tack or take its turn,
No gold laced hay or sainted straw scattered in the bed
Day breaks beyond the frame where shadows home the stead.
Her head poised in mild regard to what the right hand knows:
Hard as gothic glass is how American winds pitch blows.
No cotton more severe than that so collared in the light,
Fear the faintest color overlaid in starchest white.

Joseph Gallo
August 3, 2007