No Place But
(Entry into Jerusalem)

There is no place but this sharp edge
riding the animal present tense.

No plot; just light's saturated solution.
Just the clear nothing of praise. Just

the under-pigment story scrapes down to
when we meet ourselves suddenly all at once.

The imagined city spills down toward the life
that I am always entering

that I am laying down and taking up
like red clothes and broken branches

in the road built every second
by this patient unstoppable gait.

Copyright © 2006 Jean Gallagher All rights reserved
from Stubborn
Oberlin College Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission