NEW AMERICAN SUMMER, Kristen Gallagher

"a dog at the beach
staring at the horizon
is ridiculous
and sweet.
I feel ridiculous
up late writing to see
if anything good happens
maybe that’s a problem
I think it’s magic instead of skill
maybe that’s the world’s problem
they were taught it’s skill and not magic
I keep writing hoping to find out
whatever I find out"

Kristen sez: "A selection of poems arriving from notebooks I kept from 2020 thru 2026. A release of some ongoing correspondences (as in Spicer): riding the colonial-era backroads, rehabilitating my mother’s garden, and learning death’s dark humor in haunted Pennsylvania. Back and forth to Queens; union organizing as resisting the “normal.” Learning a poetry with no final outcome: an interruption, a snapshot, a negotiated truce..."

We say: These are poems for park bench and bedside, for out loud recitation under or not under trees; small amulets that act as convex psychedelic mirrors to our known world, signposts and premonitions to the world we'd like to know. "there are only seven minutes in eternity / the rest is phenomenal life / false gods, graffiti and
/ the glue of existence." It's a bit of poetry church: softly Schuyler, softly Tu Fu. Like a small distant star that brings an agreeable amount of warmth and light, just enough to reveal the true bits under the dermis of the fake world--and one that we might be able to slightly bend our own ears and eyes to hear and witness the scratches and songs illumined and light-cast. A book made for a back pocket.

Kristen Gallagher’s books include 85% True/Minor Ecologies (Skeleton Man, 2017), Grand Central (Troll Thread, 2016), and We Are Here (Truck Books, 2011). She is a professor of English at City University of New York — LaGuardia Community College in Queens, New York.

Kristen Gallagher, New American Summer. 32pp. $14. 5.5"x8.5" saddle stitched. 20 copies sewn with yellow Irish linen thread and given to the author. Interiors printed on French Whip Cream 70# text weight stock. Covers printed on Mohawk Ginger Fiber 80# cover stock. Printed, assembled, and bound in “Kingston, New York,” the unceded and currently occupied lands of the Haudenosaunee, Mohican, Munsee Lenape, and Schaghticoke tribes. First edition of 200. Designed by The Aliens.