Brand New Spacesuit by John Gallaher

The poems in Brand New Spacesuit by John Gallager are simultaneously meditative and urgent. The author wants the deep-down truth, but his path to that truth is meandering. The poems are linguistically playful and earnest in spirit. They remind me of Bob Hicok and David Kirby. You’re along for a ride that Gallaher controls and it’s a fun one, this shifting ground, this sideways floor. Buy here.

From “Brand New Spacesuit”

And maybe I’m not such a good person after all. How does one

even decide such a thing? The problem’s not lack of information,

it’s too much information. Ancillary, distancing noise. What matters

is in there, somewhere, innate among the bayonets and office parties.

maybe it started when I was a kid, selling Christmas wreaths

door to door. You get this feeling, approaching a house,

whether it’s going to be a sale or not. And I was invariably wrong . . . 

From “The World as Mirror”

“I feel I should be obsessing about things more” no one says,

looking down at the school art creations of their children

in the kitchen trash, like we’re saying it’s the child in the trash,

or that each thing is all things. It’s one thing to understand yourself,

it’s another altogether to know what to do with what’s left of Friday.

How you can spot faces anywhere, for instance. In clouds, tortillas.

Pareidolia, thank you. How a face is the first thing Eliot draws on sticks

he picks up while we’re out walking, and we know it’s going to be difficult

getting him to part with that stick now. How we’ll have to end up

sneaking it out of his room later, or let it sit with the rest of his 

face sticks, its little face staring up at me . . .

From “To Also Want the Bad Days to Mean Something”

The wistful smile. Different than the Mona Lisa smile. That one

is more an “I’ve got a secret with your name on it” smile. The smile

I’m thinking of is when you’re looking through your childhood

toys when you’re 50, or, today, the clothes of a dead friend.

Yesterday, I was thinking that, yes, I’m sad that Bruce is dead,

but now that we have his old dogs, and one of them has decided

indoors is a much more comfortable place to do his business (is that

the best way to say it?), I’m really sad that Bruce is dead. This is

one of those smiles where we’re all sure the person speaking, 

if the person speaking is a friend, is making a joke, that we can

make a joke because we care . . .