#TessGallagher

[sometimesthepossible]

CHOICES

by Tess Gallagher

I go to the mountain side

of the house to cut saplings,

and clear a view to snow

on the mountain. But when I look up,

saw in hand, I see a nest clutched in

the uppermost branches.

I don’t cut that one.

I don’t cut the others either.

Suddenly, in every tree,

an unseen nest

where a mountain

would be.

#tessgallagher

[thingsdavidlikes]

utterly by Morena Gaia Rampon https://flic.kr/p/2m9phUV

[expeditionpress]

Sad to miss out on a reading @openpoetrybooks tonight, but these words by #tessgallagher in shiny 18pt perpetua are admittedly fine consolation company. #metaltype #poetry #choices @graywolfpress

[llamamesirena]

Nadie llevaba gafas en su clase, aunque en el patio de recreo vio a algunas niñas con ellas. Este detalle las hacía diferentes, como si pudieran ser más listas o hacer cosas fuera de su alcance. Empezó a buscar la compañía de las que llevaban gafas. #TessGallagher #Gafas #ElAmanteDeLosCaballos #Cuento https://www.instagram.com/appellemoisirene/p/ByoZEykj6-7geFQ9--Y1WFcW7V6IpVSMuKKPXI0/?igshid=1qd4udla83029

[kaseyfaur]

The sleep of this night deepens because I have walked coatless from the house carrying the white envelope. All night it will say one name in its little tin house by the roadside. I have raised the metal flag so its shadow under the roadlamp leaves an imprint on the rain-heavy bushes. Now I will walk back thinking of the few lights still on in the town a mile away. In the yellowed light of a kitchen the millworker has finished his coffee, his wife has laid out the white slices of bread on the counter. Now while the bed they have left is still warm, I will think of you, you who are so far away you have caused me to look up at the stars. Tonight they have not moved from childhood, those games played after dark. Again I walk into the wet grass toward the starry voices. Again, I am the found one, intimate, returned by all I touch on the way.

Tess Gallagher, “Under Stars”

[poutmouthomaha]

The Hug // Tess Gallagher

A woman is reading a poem on the street and another woman stops to listen. We stop too. with our arms around each other.

Suddenly a hug comes over me and I’m giving it to you, like a variable star shooting light off to make itself comfortable, then subsiding. I finish but keep on holding you. A man walks up to us and we know he hasn’t come out of nowhere, but if he could, he would have. He looks homeless because of how he needs. “Can I have one of those?” he asks you, and I feel you nod. I’m surprised, surprised you don’t tell him how it is – that I’m yours, only yours, etc., exclusive as a nose to its face. Love – that’s what we’re talking about, love that nabs you with “for me only” and holds on.

So I walk over to him and put my arms around him and try to hug him like I mean it. He’s got an overcoat on so thick I can’t feel him past it. I’m starting the hug and thinking, “How big a hug is this supposed to be? How long shall I hold this hug?” Already we could be eternal, his arms falling over my shoulders, my hands not meeting behind his back, he is so big!

I put my head into his chest and snuggle in. I lean into him. I lean my blood and my wishes into him. He stands for it. This is his and he’s starting to give it back so well I know he’s getting it. This hug. So truly, so tenderly we stop having arms and I don’t know if my lover has walked away or what, or whether the woman is still reading the poem…

Clearly, a little permission is a dangerous thing. But when you hug someone you want it to be a masterpiece of connection, the way the button on his coat will leave the imprint of a planet in my cheek when I walk away. When I try to find some place to go back to.

[moscanna]

#tessgallagher #mooncrossingbridge I've been looking for this #beautiful #poetry #book for years! Found it #yesterday at the #palmspringslibrary #joy #happyreader #raymondcarver #janekellerthompson (at Palm Springs Public Library)

[kcecelia]

National Poetry Month. 28 April 2016. Tess Gallagher from Under Stars. #nationalpoetrymonth #poetry #poetsorg #tessgallagher

[expeditionpress]

"I go to the mountain side / of the house to cut saplings, / and clear a view to snow / on the mountain. But when I look up, ...." Tess Gallagher, "Choices," from Midnight Lantern, Graywolf Press, 2011. I found this poem last winter at the downtown @seattlepubliclibrary, thanks to the certain kind of slow, half-purposeful half-accidental wandering you can only do deep in the Dewey decimal laden stacks of real books, at a real library. By much luck and grace, I got to meet Tess and ask her permission to work with her words. Hard to add more here – suffice to say I feel all filled up. Oh! And you can reserve a copy here: shop.expedition.press. Official release is Nov 11. #choices #tessgallagher @graywolfpress #poetry #broadside #letterpress #library

[llamamesirena]

... por lo visto no pudo enamorarse de ningún otro hombre. #NuevoCrush #TessGallagher #Cuento #ElAmanteDeLosCaballos

[capngoblin]

The Ritual Of Memories

When your widow had left the graveside and you were most alone I went to you in that future you can't remember yet. I brought a basin of clear water where no tear had fallen, water gathered like grapes a drop at a time from the leaves of the willow. I brought oils, I brought a clean white gown

"Come out," I said, and you came up like a man pulling himself out of a river, a river with so many names there was no word left for it but "earth"

"Now," I said, "I'm ready. These eyes that have not left your face since the day we met, wash these eyes.        Remember, it was a country road above the sea and I was passing from the house of a friend. Look into these eyes where we met."

I saw your mind go back through the years searching for that day and finding it, you washed my eyes with the pure water so that I vanished from that road and you passed a lifetime and I was not there.

So you washed every part of me where any look or touch had passed between us. "Remember," I said, when you came to the feet, "It was the night before you would ask the girl of your village to marry. I was the strange one. I was the one with the gypsy look. Remember how you stroked these feet."

When the lips and the hands had been treated likewise and the pit of the throat where one thoughtless kiss had fallen, you rubbed in the sweet oil and I glistened like a new-made thing, not merely human, but of the world gone past being human.

“The hair,” I said. “You’ve forgotten the hair. Don’t you know it remembers. Don’t you know it keeps everything. Listen, there is your voice and in it the liar’s charm that caught me.”

You listened. You heard your voice and a look of such sadness passed over your dead face that I wanted to touch you. Who could have known I would be so held? Not you in your boyish cunning; not me in my traveler’s clothes.

It’s finished. Put the gown on my shoulders. It’s no life in the shadow of another’s joys. Let me go freely now. One life I have lived for you. This one is mine.

- Tess Gallagher from Under the Stars

[thevulgar]

TRACE, IN UNISON | Tess Gallagher

Terrible, the rain. All night, rain that I love. So the weight of his leg falls again like a huge tender wing across my hipbone. Its continuing- the rain, as he does not. Except as that caress most inhabited. Ellipsis of eucalyptus. His arms, his beautiful careless breathing. Inscription contralto where his lips graze the bow of my neck. Muslin half-light. Musk of kerosene in the hall, fixative to ceaselessly this rain, in which there is nothing to do but be happy, be free, as if someone sadly accused came in with their coat soaked through and said, "But I only wanted to weep and love," and we rolled toward the voice like one body and said with our eyes closed, "Then weep, then love." Buds of jasmine threaded through her hair so they opened after dark, brightening the room. That morning rain as it would fall, still falling, and where we had lain, an arctic light steady in the mind's releasing.

[alabelle-etoile-blog]

The Lovers

Decision made,

time to move forward. There will be a little time to gain momentum before the jump but I am in motion and the falling isn't as scary with someone beside me.

Some people can do it alone, move out into the big world after living in a dollhouse. I probably could. It would be doable.

Some people will go to hell and back if they've got someone beside them, because what's the fucking point if there isn't a hand to hold when it’s dark. Not only a hand that stretches toward you but a hand you can find in return.

And I am content. And it will be all right to make a distance of a nearness if I need to, just as I have done before.

[expeditionpress]

Green today! Dialing in the first pass for "Choices" with ivy mint + a whole lot of trans. #inkingup #coltsarmorypress #tessgallagher @graywolfpress

[expeditionpress]

"Choices" by Tess Gallagher is now officially released! First copies are already winging their way into the world. After much travel this past month, I'm mighty content to be back in the shop and shipping prints left and right – never mind the windy, chilly, power-flickering weather here in the PNW today. #choices #tessgallagher @graywolfpress

[expeditionpress]

Starstruck and steadfast delight: got to spend a day with Tess Gallagher in her tea room full of plants and good things to eat and bright streaming October sun lighting up her beauty, wit, rolling Irish/English lilt of words a constant flow of poetry across a life so rich, so full. Hours flew by and all prints were signed (Choices broadside soon to be available!) with a sudden rush to catch the day's last light along the river, and see it set on the straits. Some days account for so many days; and you know you're walking just right. #choices #tessgallagher #raymondcarver #mailbox #literarynorthwest