Poems by Louis Gallo

Credo Quia Absurdum Est

--Tertullian

And I don’t believe precisely because
It’s absurd, because the rational mind
Forbids it. How absurd--
One preposterous as the other?
I’ll change my mind tomorrow of course
Since absurdity is a two-way street
With no stop signs or red lights
Or runaway truck ramps.

Venus

You should have seen her standing there
On the beach, igniting sand, the air,
You should have seen her flamboyant hair,
Standing there, singeing my hair.
She might have enflamed you as well,
Standing there, rising from her shell.

Hope

Hope is protein, spiritual protein,
no, pre-proteinian amino acids,
hope is a desperate quark
seeking to break its binds.
Hope is reverse suicide.

Future

I looked into the future.
She riveted my eye.

“You whores of time are all the same,”
She sighed.

“Why whores?” I cried, ashamed.
She loosened Her hair, exposed

A thigh: “Because you’ll pay
My fee for a piece of me.”

Missing

I’ve got the mortar
but not the pestle

at one time I had
the pestle but
not the mortar

something always
missing
something always
amiss

same with the hook
& eye

and the eye itself
always misses
what it sees
and sees
what it misses

Sunday

. . .too dark to see
--Bob Dylan

Easter morn
and the fisher of men
is back on the dock
with his pole and bait

looks like rain
looks like ablution
looks like something’s
about to be hooked

Why Won’t You Talk?

I won’t repeat what I’ve said
Because we all know the effects
Of echolalia, that ear burn, words
Backfiring on themselves in a Babel
Of resentment, unspoken vowels floating
Like tiny dirigibles loaded with explosives—
Which is why silence strangles intention,
Why the said pales beside the unsaid,
Why nothing bespeaks everything.
Why mute wisdom subsumes eloquence,
Why chatter spreads like dust
Over every autopsy.

Seven volumes of Louis Gallo’s poetry: Archaeology, Scherzo Furiant, Crash, Clearing the Attic, Ghostly Demarcation & The Pandemic Papers, Why is there Something Rather than Nothing? and Leeway & Advent. His work appears in Best Short Fiction 2020. A novella, “The Art Deco Lung,” appears in Storylandia. National Public Radio aired a reading and discussion of his poetry on its “With Good Reason” series (December 2020). 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 of the Twentieth Century. 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 grants for fiction and Poet in the Schools in Sumpter, S.C., an NEH grant for a presentation on Mardi Gras. He was invited to participate in a poetry reading at Spoleto Festival in Charleston. He is now Professor Emeritus at Radford University in Radford, Virginia. He is a native of New Orleans.