August 13, 2015
In Guadalajara, one of us will emerge as the fearless leader
by Kristina Marie Darling and John Gallaher
About Kristina Marie Darling
Kristina Marie Darling is the author of over twenty collections of poetry and hybrid prose. Her awards include fellowships from Yaddo, the Ucross Foundation, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and the American Academy in Rome, as well as grants from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Kittredge Fund, the Ora Lerman Trust, and the Rockefeller Foundation Archive Center. She is currently working toward both a Ph.D. in English Literature at S.U.N.Y.-Buffalo and an M.F.A. in Poetry at New York University.
About John Gallaher
John Gallaher is the author of five books of poetry, including Your Father on the Train of Ghosts (with G.C. Waldrep, 2011), and In a Landscape (2014), as well as two chapbooks, and two edited collections, The Monkey and the Wrench (with Mary Biddinger) and Time Is a Toy: the Selected Poems of Michael Benedikt (with Laura Boss). His poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry, Poetry, Boston Review, Chicago Review, and elsewhere.
From the beginning, I wasn't good at following the rules. You just kept making ordinances, though, and I wondered if you liked seeing them broken.
First, there were the specifications for your office, which must always be stocked with fine wines and expensive chocolates. Then there was the code of conduct at the house, that seemingly endless list of warnings mounted above the kitchen table: If you leave the gate unlatched just once. If you look inside any of the cabinets.
It goes without saying that resistance is often about subtlety. So don't ask me why your coffee tastes different this morning.
Don't ask why there's so much sorrow in the trees.