Map Literary: A Journal of Contemporary Writing and Art
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John Gallaher

In a Landscape: LV

Looking at each other just now, which is the intrusion: 
the environment, as we’re trying to talk, or us? It’s worth 
thinking about for a bit, how Morton Feldman 
and John Cage were talking about it in 1966, the nature 
of intrusion, where it comes from. There’s always another way 
to look at things (is that music or traffic?), which seems to me right now, 
another way to support the idea that doing nothing 
is the best course of action in most situations. Just sit tight. 

Once, when I was in high school, six or so of us 
went to Brendan’s house for the weekend. His parents 
were probably away. I think it was after their divorce,
and a couple years before his brother drowned. We got a case 
of beer, and took it to a little park overlooking the Long 
Island Sound, where we could wave at Connecticut. It was 
night. It took almost no time at all for the police 
to show up, the way they tend to do in these stories. I decided 
the jig was up and just stayed sitting on the case of beer 
resting beneath a little tree. Everyone else took off. Funny thing, 
so did the police, giving chase. I still had a beer 
in my hand, sitting there, watching them all run off 
into the dark of the little woods. So I picked up 
the case of beer and carried it back to Brendan’s house to wait, 
and then that becomes something of a study. 

When I was young, I lived in Orange County and ended up 
going to Disneyland 35 times. I was trapped at “Yo ho, 
Yo ho, a pirate’s life for me” once, for about 45 minutes. “Don’t tell them, 
Carlos” one of the townswomen kept saying. We’re some music, 
as our world is always coming to an end. We’re relevant awhile, 
and then it’s some other currency with all the wrong faces on it, 
and people are talking a language we’re never heard before.
I keep thinking that if I just keep sitting here, I’ll see us all come running back 
out of the woods, some turn of the dial. And we’ll be numerous,
won’t we, and we’ll all matter, mostly harmless, sitting there 
telling each other these stories, and each of us remembering it
so that we’re the one who gets away.





In a Landscape: LVI

The landscape is on fire, and where are you 
going to start? Everyone and everything 
is burning. Are you a firefighter or a fire chief? Where 
does the buck stop? It was my name on the deposit slip. The deposit 
was for just under $3,000, and it was missing. 
And $2,500 was missing from the safe as well. Then they 
started dragging everything they could find 
into it. I was divorced at 20. I put a bunch of tape 
on the side exit door so it wouldn’t lock. The lie-detector 
guy said my answers weren’t very dependable, but weren’t 
damning either. So there I was in my own little detective show. Well, 
the tape was an easy one. I put it there when the drive-thru speaker 
wasn’t working, and we had to keep running out and back, 
and the door would lock behind us. It seemed a crisis 
decision, so I didn’t think to make a note about it. I was being a team 
player. And the divorce, isn’t that pretty much everyone’s story? 

I remember once, when I was 19, I had a job interview
with a Wall Street firm. I can’t remember specifically 
what the job was for. They just sat there on either side of me, 
these two guys, asking things like, “Aren’t you just 
chasing your own death?” I think that interview
fundamentally changed something in me. Not only 
didn’t I want the job after that, but I also had a distinct 
feeling that maybe it had never happened. Maybe it was a vision, 
the last two cents I was going to get from the numinous.
The overcoat I was carrying didn’t fit me. It was a prop. Something 
to carry. Reality is a parade of people twisting and saying “Boo”
as we’re all chasing our own waiting rooms. Or something like that. 

“We have it right here. You were the one who signed the deposit slip. 
You can talk all you want, but you can’t poke a hole in it,” 
the district manager said to me from behind a massive moustache. 
There I was in the office of a Carl’s Jr. in San Antonio, Texas, 1985. 
He handed the deposit slip to me, or more, pushed it in my direction. So 
I looked at it. What else was I to do? I picked up a pencil 
and poked a hole in it. Right beside my name. A little empty space. 
A little empty space with lead all around the edges.






Picture
John Gallaher’s fifth book of poetry, In a Landscape, will be out in fall 2014 from BOA. He lives in rural Missouri and co-edits The Laurel Review. A collection of poems he edited, Time Is a Toy: The Selected Poems of Michael Benedikt will be out in early 2014 from The U of Akron Press.

published by
The Department of English
College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences
The William Paterson University of New Jersey
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Map Literary

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  • About
    • Masthead
    • Submissions
    • Rachel Wetzsteon Chapbook Award
    • NJ High School Writing Contest
    • In Print
    • Subscribe
    • Links
    • Internship Opportunity
    • WPU MFA
  • Poetry
    • Richard Ryal
    • Sherwood Anderson
    • Mark DeCarteret
    • Dennis Hinrichsen Poetry
    • Daniel Biegelson
    • Natan Last
    • Jim Daniels Poetry
    • Michael Chang
    • D E Steward
    • Benjamin Paloff Poetry
    • David Dodd Lee
    • Isabelle Doyle
    • Kathleen Heil
    • Leonard Kress
    • Lauren Tess
    • Cesca Janece Waterfield
    • Billy Cancel Poetry
    • Scott Minar
    • Greg Glazner
    • Bruce McRae
    • Maureen Thorson
  • Fiction
    • On Experimental Fiction
    • Mark Cassidy, "How I Met My Wife"
    • Emily Trachtenberg, "Plum"
    • Hector Donovan-Gonzalez
    • Christopher Linforth, "Zia"
    • Jenessa Abrams, "You Never Wish That Upon Anyone"
    • Eros Livieratos, "On Feeling"
    • Halsted M. Bernard, "Your Hands"
    • Justin Meckes, "The Gash"
    • Reb Livingston, from "Bombyonder"
    • Craig Foltz, "Without Stigma"
  • Nonfiction
    • Martha Wiseman, "Loose Ends"
    • Jan Jolly, "Through My Father's Glasses"
    • Kristina Moriconi, "Still Looking"
    • Wm. Anthony Connolly, "IGY"
    • Cal Freeman, "Loosestrife"
    • W.F. Lantry, "The Strange Beauty of the Unfamiliar"
    • Michael Roloff, "Accretion"
    • Andrew Sunshine, "John Hancock's John Hancock"
    • Diane Payne, "3 micro memoirs"
    • Luc Sante, "Flesh and Bone"
    • Isobel O'Hare, "Failure: A Love Letter"
    • Melissa Wiley, "Barbed Wire Fence"
    • Ashley Wilkinson, "fractional distillation"
  • Art