Alan Gann

Alan Gann facilitates writing workshops and afterschool programming at Texans Can Academy, and wrote DaVerse Works, Big Thought’s performance poetry curriculum. A multiple Pushcart and Best-of-the-Net nominee, Alan is the author of three volumes of poetry: Better Ways to See (forthcoming from Assure Press), That’s Entertainment (Lamar University Literary Press), and Adventures of the Clumsy Juggler (Ink Brush Press). His nonexistent spare time is spent outdoors: biking, bird watching, and snapping photographs.

why apples fall

newton calculated
the force of an apple’s attraction to the earth
but how fast and hard
is shallow understanding

my mother says
most behaviors are learned by imitation
the apple falls tomorrow
because it watched
all the apples falling today
who fall because of what they saw
who fall because of what they saw
who fall all the way back
to our first fall and back again
to the first angel falling away

but my father believes falling
is the inevitable result of rising
striving to achieve escape velocity
ad astra
and beyond the thermodynamics of capitalism

my sister the gardener lives in a world
filled with green songs
suggests apples fall
because dewy grass sings as a siren
come come whomever you are
but I grok that seeds need dirt
and when they finally learn to take root
in the empty air of existence
apples will fly

Tilt-A-Whirl

Before Big Tex says this night’s final Howdy
While funnel cakes still fry
As midway lights flash and roller coasters rattle
When breezes carry the earthy fulfillment of livestock pens
While the barker’s sing and thin bells toll false hope
As ginzu knives slice another tomato thinner than thin
When red ribbon pies share cinnamon secrets and regret
After I almost win you that giant blue bear
Because Elvis is sculpted in butter and refuses to sing our song
After we have strolled over enough damp sawdust
Looked at all the 4H chickens and poufy lambs
After we take our turn on the Texas Star
Trade final tickets for dark beers and kettle corn we cannot finish
Pull me behind the house of mirrors
Push me up against grimy clapboard siding
Kiss me as if I had to have you home by midnight.