Monday, September 7, 2015

Annabel Banks- Three Poems


Not Unperturbed

There’s a little bit of listening that has to be done under street lights
to the voice forever asking— has there been a death in the family?

May Day is over: vomit-smelling blossom, pale despite the dark
of plague-pit superstitions, has allowed the house to rot.

Be quiet. You’ll learn to unhear prayers for the departed.
Learn closed-curtain traditions. Taste funeral biscuits, burnt. 



Exercise in the Fourth Dimension

Today my body is chattering unhappy
       (promised walks, the other lies)

jiggles a leg like a warning rope
                           ready to climb, climbing…

Wants me to stop all the preparations
       (just get on: work is movement)

but I've balanced the hours on my back
                           and am now too scared to move. 



 Endings

               We dream differences
                      to who said what    
             the wrong time

                                that kiss of disaster
                                     could have breadcrumbed us home

              or today          
                         their swimming
           in the fog-freeze water
                                      for a thrill
                                                of broken by-law
                       
                      left them dry             warm. 


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