Member Spotlight:
Cynthia Gallaher

April 2024

Cynthia Gallaher is a Chicago USA-based poet, and author of four collections of poetry and three chapbooks, many with themes, such as Epicurean Ecstasy: More Poems About Food, Drink, Herbs & Spices and her poetry chapbook on liquids, Drenched. Her nonfiction memoir/reference/creativity guide Frugal Poets’ Guide to Life: How to Live a Poetic Life, Even If You Aren’t a Poet won a National Indie Excellence Award. 

Besides the United States & Canada, her poetry has appeared in publications from England, Scotland, Netherlands, Sweden, Eastern Europe, India, Japan, China, Hong Kong & New Zealand.  

It’s a cyrillic head dance,
alphas, epsilons,
thetas and theophany.

Spanish language radio drifts through stained glass,
students comprehend every fifth palabra
and forget what language to daydream in.

Sentences skirt along flamenco-ruffled rhythms,
each spicy companion cradles a different phraseology in one hand,
while a bilingual dictionary rests unopened in the other.

Snow clouds powder encryptions on outdoor icons,
post-Delphic messages
lie scrambled under drifts.

Latin mass memories recycle, Dominus vobiscum,
an asymmetrical song and a metered click from an incense burner
cleave music and aroma to multi-tongued crowds of the past.

Where are the Polish grandmas who grasped rosaries, whispered prayers,
“Peash, pa-peash, peash,” in the pews behind me. “Brakuje mi ciebie.”
Shushed soundtracks of three-day wakes.

Fast forward, the Greek priest blesses another funeral
making the sign of the cross opposite of Jesuits,
Parakletos hovers 40 days after death
before the dearly’s heavenly departure: A queue forms.

The Greek priest spoon feeds wine to the chatty and taciturn alike,
a redemptive alphabet soup bears a celestial lexicon,
each mouth forms
a silent omega.

Glossary
Theophany (Greek): The baptism of Christ; a Christ vision
Palabras (Spanish): words
Dominus vobiscum (Latin): The Lord be with you
Brakuje mi ciebie (Polish): I miss you–(brach mee chevie-yah)
Parakletos (Greek): The Holy Spirit

When did you first start writing poetry?

My first poetry reading was at my eighth-grade graduation ceremony. The teachers asked me to write a poem thanking my parents, and I read it aloud to the audience. I didn’t think much about it at the time. But I later started writing poems in high school, after a friend introduced me to the work of Allen Ginsberg and Andrei Codrescu. I got serious about poetry only after college, becoming a regular part of the Chicago poetry scene on Lincoln Avenue, which was then the place to be. I talk about those early days in my memoir/creativity guide Frugal Poets’ Guide to Life: How to Live a Poetic Life, Even If You Aren’t a Poet.

What inspires you? Other poets, painting? Music?

I have diverse interests, as do many people. But I’m glad I can also translate those interests into poems. In addition to being a poet, I’m also an avid swimmer, a yoga instructor, a certified aromatherapist, lover of various kinds of music, and a former fashion copywriter. So I’ve written a number of poems about swimming and water, fashion, music, essential oils, and art, among other topics. I hold a degree in the History of Art and Architecture (not English, by the way, though I completed a number of courses in that subject, including a poetry writing class with poet Michael Anania, and a workshop with the late poet Larry Levis) and just finished a manuscript of ekphrastic poems. Read more ⟶

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Introduction