In Hough, One Of The Neighborhoods
of Cleveland, She Is The Crown
Of Wisdom


The light that clothes itself
in vessels is the woman who
sits still to eat her supper,
she thinks. It is like all her
compassion is prevailing before
a wind comes up to take it all
away. I love a man who gives
me water and then floats away.

It is my work to conceive. It
is El’s to bring work to himself.
I will sustain existence. He
will gain unerasable names and
put them inside his honest soul.
Mutability and multiplicity, and
potentiality and actuality are
his beginnings and his end. I

speak for him. Now, I die for
him. He has substracted me, and
in doing that, has made me feel
all the freedom. I am saying I
am the perfect woman. I am also
saying he is not a perfect man
and knows it. And that is why
I’ll ever remain married to him.


The Infinite Transcends His Content


Joe begged for sleep. Instead,
he attained corporeality and
the confusion within his faith.
He looked up, said, my denial
assumes heresy, but it is all
about the fact that I am now
nonexistent. Wife, Lil, turned
the tv on, watched a bit of
Letterman, and turned it off.

He spotted a star on the blank
tv screen, saw it was pure,
and the vibrancy made his head
fall into a slumber. His wife
woke the next morn to ready
herself for work. Saw that
her husband had died; took a
shower, went to work. Made
a call at 6pm when she came

home; the police and emergency
squads came and took him away.
Later that evening the kids
came over. Much later, she
again watched Letterman, and
turned off the light and fell
asleep, got up, went to work
and proceeded to make arrange-
ments to bury an ugly memory.


God Said To Moses, ‘Show Me Your Presence”


My dad says, I have brought you
to the vast ocean. Jim tells you
he has to tell you this, that
now that you are his lover, you
have to know. He continues, dad
lifts his hands and dies there
in the deep sand, all in one
finite motion. And I did not
cry because I knew this was all
part of his scheme. One that did
not have nothing but fate attached
to it. Quietly, whispering inside
my head, dad said, keep your soul
from gazing and your mind from
conceiving. Linn said, did you?

Linn and Jim know the tide is out.
Hell no, I knew that I should not
follow my dad’s death whims. I
should be the opposite. That is
why I read novels and do not earn
money. That is why I will take you
in, and then, toss you out in a week.
My dad controls my life by telling
me to do, as I do the opposite.
Is this fine with you? Linn says,
I think your dad is right for us.
This is why I tell you yes, and
with the same breath, tell you I
am going, going to another lighter
man, a man who is uglier than you.

Daniel Gallik (sixgalliks@alltel.net)