Jeannine Hall Gailey

June 12, 2021

“Advice Given to Me Before My Wedding” by Jeannine Hall GaileyPosted by

Jeannine Hall Gailey

ADVICE GIVEN TO ME BEFORE MY WEDDING

Better to be the lover than the beloved, you’ll have passion.
Better to be the beloved, a sure thing, a lifetime of that.

He is more beautiful but you,
you have more power. Which is to say,

you are just like your brother. Lift your eyes
and people do what you say. Who knows why.

Men are like breakfast cereal. You have to pick one.
Fish in the sea, a dime a dozen. They are singing for you, now.

Keep your own bank account. Keep working.
Give him a blow job, and he’ll volunteer to take out the trash.

You are mine, says the beloved, and I am yours.
Whither you go I will go. Honey and milk are under her tongue.

Cancer and Taurus, very compatible.
You’re the hard-charger, he’s the homemaker.

Don’t stop wearing lipstick. Don’t put on any weight.
Don’t buy the dress too soon. If you go on the pill, your breasts will swell.

One day you might regret. You might do better.
You could do worse. One man’s as good as another.

Wear my old pearls. Here’s the blue, a handkerchief embroidered with tears.
If you won’t wear heels, you’ll look short in the pictures.

If you don’t wear a veil, people will say you’re not a virgin.
Good luck, glad tidings, a teddie, a toaster. So long, farewell.

—from Rattle #29, Summer 2008

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Jeannine Hall Gailey: “I recommend ignoring all advice you get before your wedding.” (web)

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February 9, 2018

“Self-Portrait as Escape Artist” by Jeannine Hall GaileyPosted by

Jeannine Hall Gailey

SELF-PORTRAIT AS ESCAPE ARTIST

I could say at 42 I’ve escaped death already many times.
Maybe I was due, like a library book,
at an earlier age, but some spirit renewed me.

I almost drowned at three, then twice got scarlet fever
at 6 and 10. I could have died of my rare bleeding disorder
at 12; thanks to modern prescriptions, life prevailed.

I’ve become an expert at dodging tornadoes
and downed planes, traffic accidents and plain old bad luck.
I’ve been in a lot of hospitals, where doctors made mistakes—

but still, woke up every time, little worse for wear.
I’ve been scared of death, but now he seems so familiar,
an old sweater I’ve casually tossed aside so often.

Please remember when I die that I was lucky
to be here at all—my mother’s pregnancy uneasy,
birth difficult and under an ill star, infancy involving

incubators for a little baby blue me. So when I finally
take the fall, I must remember to say thank you
for the breaks that kept me ahead of the game so long.

—from Rattle #58, Winter 2017

[download audio]

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Jeannine Hall Gailey: “I wrote ‘Self-Portrait as Escape Artist’ last year after I was diagnosed with metastasized cancer in my liver. I thought to myself, ‘I’ve escaped death so many times, what’s one more?’ I am happy to say I have already outlived my original prognosis so will continue to practice poetry and escaping for a little while longer.” (web)

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March 29, 2014

“Horoscope” by Jeannine Hall GaileyPosted by

Jeannine Hall Gailey

HOROSCOPE

Chinese Horoscope: Born 1973, the Year of the Ox—
Sincere, persevering, stubborn, intelligent.
Born in April under Taurus, the Bull,
headstrong, material, another working stiff.

But how can a horoscope say anything about you?
laughing, he asks me. Can everyone born
in the same week, in the same year have similar traits?
Ridiculous, he shrugs, even to suggest it.

But here I am, weighted down by my intractable
horns, pushing him out of his shell, little Crab, little Cancer,
as we build a nest from earth and water.

—from Rattle #20, Winter 2003

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June 26, 2013

“Elemental” by Jeannine Hall GaileyPosted by

Jeannine Hall Gailey

ELEMENTAL

The titanium staple
the surgeon left in your stomach
is just the beginning:

it’s the strontium-90 in your baby teeth,
in the bones of your parents.
(The dust of New Mexico, the echoes of
tests of implosion triggers
fifty, sixty years ago.)

Note the Americium in your smoke detector.
Note the rate of decay per second.
The trees drink Cesium click click click
The bees weave particles into their nests click click click

The traces around you
of other people’s experiments
linger in your veins, lungs, eggs
linger in your femur and kidney.

Carbon-based structures,
we absorb from the water, from the air,
from our food, from our walls
from our parks and fishing ponds.

We absorb and our body says:
it is good.

—from Rattle #38, Winter 2012
Tribute to Speculative Poetry

[download audio]

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December 5, 2011

A WITNESS IN EXILE by Brian SpearsPosted by

Review by Jeannine Hall GaileyA Witness in Exile by Brian Spears

A WITNESS IN EXILE
by Brian Spears

Louisiana Literature Press
SLU Box 10792
Hammond, LA 70402
ISBN 978-0945083290
2011, 72 pp., $14.95
louisianaliterature.org

Brian Spears introduces the subject matter of the book right in the title: A Witness in Exile refers to his disenchantment and estrangement from the religion of his childhood as a Jehovah’s Witness and because of this, his family of origin as well. Some of the best poetic moments in the book use to great effect the combination of a warm sense of humor and a poignant desire to believe.

A secondary theme throughout the book is Spears’ attachment to landscapes (Florida, New Mexico, California, and Louisiana, in particular) that seem in many poems to be threatened both ecologically and spiritually. Many of them have whimsical titles like “One Day the Ruins of the Galleria Mall Will Shelter Armadillos” or “’Salons are collecting hair to soak up oil.’” The speaker’s exiled wanderings keep him pondering the vulnerability and perpetually-changing nature of the world around him.

I have to admit that what drew me to the book initially was the quality of the poems’ voice – an idiosyncratic, approachable voice that I believe many regular readers of Rattle would enjoy. (In fact, I immediately scanned the acknowledgement page to see if Rattle would be there, because the poems would seem very at home in one of their issues!) Spears writes poems that are playful without being complicated, intelligent while still being fairly direct. The echoes of Biblical language in many of the poems elevate the sonics in a way that reminded me sometimes of song, sometimes of the cadences of the church service. “i sing of Brian, born of God” reminded me of both E.E. Cummings and a psalm, the tone teetering between resignation and triumph:

who spent his life entrenched at prayer
his palms clasped so, his shoe soles bare…
That Brian is no longer here.
His parents say he is not one
of their body, though Christ is love…

This kind of bare-knuckled autobiography works well because Spears chooses painstakingly authentic details–the flattering and unflattering, the dramatic and the mundane–with witty mindfulness.

The second thing that attracted me to the book was the way in which the author approached the religion of his youth–with both wry distance and with humane respect. I believe it’s difficult to treat the subject of belief and unbelief well, and Spears has done a great job of it in this collection. The final poem of the book, in particular, “Jubilate Patro,” in the form of Christopher Smart’s poem “For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry,” is particularly heart-wrenching. It describes the speaker’s conflicting feelings for his father, the father’s struggle with Alzheimer’s, and the lessons the speaker learned from his father:

For his favorite animal was a porcupine, a creature of defense…
For when Louis Jordan came on the stereo he would grab my mother and twirl her
in the living room of our trailer so that the floors shook…
For he taught me there are things more important than family and sometimes I hate him for that
For his father is Jehovah and he has no son anymore

The portrait the speaker of the poem paints of his father is one of pained love, anger, and acute observation.

A Witness in Exile is not divided into sections, but the general motion of the book is from the impersonal–descriptions of the worlds around the writer–to more personal poems. This made the second half of the book more compelling to me, because these poems are the ones that highlight Spears’ deft use of tone and language.

Overall, Brian Spears’ first collection demonstrates the humour that can be mined in the apocalyptic, the love that can be salvaged from broken family relationships, and a faith based in an unblinking consideration of the fragile human concepts of truth, God, trust, and forgiveness.

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Jeannine Hall Gailey is the author of Becoming the Villainess (Steel Toe Books, 2006) and She Returns to the Floating World (Kitsune Books, 2011.) Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in journals like The Iowa Review, The Seattle Review, and Prairie Schooner. She volunteers as an editorial consultant for Crab Creek Review and currently teaches at the MFA program at National University. Her web site is www.webbish6.com.

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December 12, 2010

“I Forgot to Tell You the Most Important Part” by Jeannine Hall GaileyPosted by

Jeannine Hall Gailey

I FORGOT TO TELL YOU THE MOST IMPORTANT PART…

Without this knowledge, you’ll never make it:
it’s one part fashion advice and two parts survivalist.
Learn to talk to people so they think you’re honest
but never be honest. Cooking eggs may save your life,
so crack them, neat and firm, pour into the skillet,
stir gently. Forget about your shoes; people will judge
you by your shine, the imminent light you offer them.
Be a lamppost in wilderness, be the elephant
in the showroom. If you steal the idol, make sure
to carry a weighted bag of sand. No surprises: we’ve lied
about having it all. It’s either the piano or the pit viper.
Cinderella’s shoe came off at midnight because it hurt,
and Red Riding Hood’s real story involves cannibalism and a striptease.
Don’t wear red lipstick, don’t you kiss your mother with that mouth?
Long bangs hide a multitude of sins. Ask your grandmother
about the herbs she used to swallow while pregnant.
The butterflies here didn’t start out black, they were white
as onion skin—and the forest was more ominous
before the smokestacks. Well, here’s your little basket
and coat, sweetheart, sweetmeat, smile like you mean it,
shake what you’ve got while you’ve got it,
go out into the world and knock them dead.

—from Rattle #33, Summer 2010

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September 17, 2010

“To a Self-Proclaimed Manic Depressive Ex-Stripper Poet, After a Reading” by Jeannine Hall GaileyPosted by

Jeannine Hall Gailey

TO A SELF-PROCLAIMED MANIC DEPRESSIVE EX-STRIPPER
POET, AFTER A READING

Remember: you are a blank page
no amount of shopping can cure.
One night you go out in tassels
and the next like a nun, but we still
love you. Can’t hold your liquor?
Never mind. Little angel, little bombthrower—
where would our malls
be without you? And the readings
you give in your corset are always good
for a crowd. I didn’t stop to give you
any advice. Get moving, screams Self
Magazine, or get medicated. Stay in the sun.
One more roast beef sandwich to watch you
wear yourself out for the muse. In the mirror,
you continue to shrink and I tell you—
eat this piece of cherry pie. It’s laced with cinnamon,
and maybe lithium. Also, write, but remember
writing will not be the death of you, or the life.
Keep watching the skies. Or skis. Sign a happy tune.
If this world doesn’t know the magic they behold,
create it for them. Remember to paint over the lines.
Forget your high heels and dance, Cinderella, dance.

—from Rattle #24, Winter 2005

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