Jul 24, 2022

Poems by Jack Galmitz

HILLS

Sure you like to climb
but you hesitate
because you like
to maintain distance
to what's there
otherwise, if you step
on the trail that ascends
with labored breath
you'll realize it will end
and what then


UNTITLED

When she talks
I hear her
four guitars off
maybe it's a viola
I could be wrong.
It's drawn across
the heart I'm sure
and rises up
as I lean down
and there's four stars.
I saw her before,
but where I can't recall.
Maybe at the mall
with her girlfriends.
She was taller.
And all to me
missing from the décollage
of my investigation
of (if you'll excuse the word)
being was in her.


OPUS 4

We're introduced
and engage in small talk -
String Quartet, Op. 4.
All the score:
the notes in each bar,
the articulation, the tone;
we have so much
to learn from one
another.
We listen closely.
More than once.
We watch the night
paint surfaces and we
take notes.
What more can we do?
The music becomes richer,
more precise as we draw
closer than before.


DO YOUR PART

Bison were shot
dead until there
were few left.
Their hides were piled
up like mountains.
That was then.
Now that they've been
brought back they're made
into burgers.
What else
would you expect.
They say the meat
has a pleasant taste
when flame broiled.
I've never tasted them
and I think I'll pass on this.
Why? So the Plains Indians
can regain their stature
in an alternate
future.

Poem by Stephen Bett

Novel Lines 101:  101 alphabetical poems, each riffing on the opening line of a postmodern novel or metafiction. Antonio Lobo Antunes, Act o...