C.E. Gallagher

Dialogue Between Photographs

You look amused.

Is it the laugh lines
emanating from the two blue orbs,
like flower petals
loves me
loves me not?

Your grin belies the diagnosis.

Can you see beyond the three years
they gave you?
Onto a landscape
of considerable distance,
scars of sun and experience,
cheeks, creamed and colored
softly sagging,
beauty marks grown into moles.

Watching in black and white
and expectation,

We are one mother.

And our first born
now speaks of the next generation.

Chinese History

My daughter, Meng Ling has beautiful big feet.
Born 100 years too late to walk on lotus flowers,
She takes giant steps
Climbing over the Great Wall.

My daughter, Julia Meng Ling loves poetry.
Prayers and poems at bedtime.
Born 34 years after the Cultural Revolution,
Her first English word: “Amen!”

My little girl loves Jesus.
Born 28 years after Nixon visited China,
A steady stream of Scriptures is smuggled in
Till Jesus rubs elbows with Buddha.

Not seen, but heard in the cities of sardines.
Julia runs through open doors to Sunday school
To embrace the children, her teachers
The Word.

My Chinese daughter loves me.
Born 10 years after the flood of baby girls first overflowed the banks of Chinese
orphanages,
She gently strokes my cheeks, looks into my blue eyes,
And calls me “Mama.”

Julia loves the freedom to run.
Reborn in America one year ago
She is free from the walker that held her back,
Free from the cot that tied her down,
Free from the bondage of her native society,
Free to blossom,
a lotus flower.

Out of the Bag

I am only as good
As the hand that holds me.

I had hopes:
Rolling pizza for a rollicking crowd,
Playing in clay, pushed and pulled, plied
Between pudgey fingers…
Limitless hot dogs and snowmen
In chartreuse and lavender…
Cut-out cookies at Christmastime.

I am stamped:
Made in America.
Ha! The land of opportunity!
Back and forth,
Back and forth,
For every up,
Down.
Opportunity?
Absurd!

At least I haven’t landed
In the melting pot.
My wood charred.
Metal softened from shape.
I have landed in the junk drawer.
Having lost my string,
Pulled from position,
What is left
Is an empty hole
Laying side by side
Along parts of basters,
Skewers, misshapen spoons
And such.

I have rolled miles of wallflowers
In short segments,
Drips and drabs.
I have straightened stripes.

Yes,
like the surnames of English ancestry:
Smith, Taylor, Baker, Cooper…
I am skillful.
I am “Seam-roller.”