March 10, 2024

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Hyperdusk

by Shamala Gallagher

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Hyperdusk

By Shamala Gallagher

Writing is too much waddling

around embarrassed like a hot orange duck

while a few people peer into a slot, watching,

or don’t. For me it’s almost 

too late. I can’t believe I let this happen

again—flying, hot gold flicked with lightning,

that’s how I like it, thought quick

as parrots. Of course now I’m 

here in exploded hours scrabbling at sleep, 

tonguing at nail-bitten 

death eros. I know the way out

of mania, everyone bipolar 

and alive knows it. There are two. 

One, do every boring thing

you can think of, 

if you can

remember how to be bored. 

If that doesn’t work, there’s one door

out into the ice swamp, where it’s too

slow to say anything, it takes months and months

or years where you forget

everything,

oh well. There’s of course the third route

but usually, if you don’t take that way, 

you get to return

back where I was, where it was good

enough but I wanted better

and I’ll get there soon. For now I’m clinging to a spire

in sight’s impossible glitter,

reaching for my own hand. 

Shamala Gallagher (she/they) is a writer and community college teacher in Athens, GA. She is the author of the poetry book Late Morning When the World Burns, and her essays and poems appear in Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, The Offing, Bennington Review, and the recent anthologies Future Library: Contemporary Indian Writing and The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood. 

Image description: A selfie of Shamala Gallagher smiling in a corner of their office: they have short black hair, tan skin, and large, translucent plastic glasses, and they are wearing a white top with big blue flowers.

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