Jack Galmitz


A lexicon I’m thinking on

accounting for

You not talking to me
You walking ahead of me
You lying in bed till late in the day
You waiting till sunset
to shop at the Supermarket
You practicing calligraphy
You watching Chinese TV

She down the hall transitioning
She who I wished would have leashed me
& made me suck her strap-on
till she screamed in the Ether World
She who was tall and cat walking beautiful

Iron railings concrete steps
out into the sun
He parked in front
of the No Parking sign
sitting in a camp chair
smoking a cigar
vacationing on the sweltering
asphalt making telephone calls



My father and I had gone to the movies.

We sat in the second row and craned our necks to see the screen.

                Near the end, we were surrounded by a great expanse of desert. I asked my father what was happening, but all I got was a shush sound.

                Specks appeared on the horizon. I squinted to be sure there was something there. Yes, there were specks. Ever so slightly the figures got closer. They appeared larger although they were still no more than specks.

                In time I could make out puffs of dust kicked up by riders’ horses and a sloping trail of hoof prints in the sand.

                After what seemed hours, I could make out the cowboy hats and leather vests of the riders. I couldn’t connect the men to what transpired earlier in the film, but they were definitely riding towards us. No words were spoken.

                I waited. They moved in the heat shimmer of the sand. I had no idea what their purpose was except to proceed.

                As they drew near they were huge because of our proximity to the screen. Their dialogue was clear, yet I couldn’t understand what they were saying.

                Eventually, they were so close that all I could see were the long, lean legs of their horses and their powerful chests. It felt as if their hoofs were walking on top of our heads. They fidgeted as they were pulled up by their reins.

                As they circled, I looked over and I couldn’t find my father. He was no longer there. He had died.

                I was in bed under a sheet, but I was not in time. When it said The End the screen faded out and the room was black.



It’s a graveyard

Yali, the world

all the greatness gone

the profiles, the close-ups

recorded sounds speeches

to enthrall a crowd

the images on nitrate film decomposed

the pressed words

a trace of what was thought before



and you and me

pressed close

when we were strong

a rhino charging

through your woods

heard those underbrush moans

the lashes of love



and everything is gone

the plants you tended so long

the eggshells you crushed

and put in their soil

to make them strong



It’s a graveyard, Yali

and all is gone




Jack Galmitz prefers the imaginary to the real. He spends most of his time alone creating stories and visual images only some of which make it to paper. He is nearing 70 and hoping that Herman Hesse was right: that after death we enter our dreamworld.
 
 
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