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Lea Banks
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Lea Banks is the author of the chapbook All of Me, (Booksmyth Press, 2008). She was a finalist for The Pavel Srut Fellowship in Prague and two poems were 2009 Pushcart Prize nominations. Banks is the founder of the nationally-known Collected Poets Series in Shelburne Falls, MA and editor of Oscillation: Poetry in Motion. She was the former poetry editor of The Equinox and editorial assistant for the Marlboro Review. She attended New England College’s MFA program, facilitated stroke survivors’ writing workshops, and is a full-time poet, community organizer, freelance editor and writer. Banks has published in several journals including Poetry Northwest, Slipstream, Diner, Sweet, and American Poetry Journal. See more here: www.leabanks.com.
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THE MAJESTY
It was the end of the summer
and all the yellow pollen smell
of an afternoon. Withheld wings
of longing clutched in my torso.
The middle of the day is furious.
The bees soldier on in the sunburnt grass.
Their gossamer simmer - like ladies
in saffron, all hoary and damp beneath
their breasts - teems in this waste of heat.
I painted tomatoes, found them of Prussian
red cast, untrained on sodden fusty hay.
I wrote string beans, tangled up in their
green finery, strangled like the twine they
were tied upon. A thin thread of fiery
flourish; tiny stamens tongued my ankles.
The golden feathers were hidden behind
an old rock. Goldfinch? Grosbeak?
Small, flaxen, pithy; the most beautiful
thing we had surprised upon in our
thousand year reign. You said most
likely chicken feathers blown carelessly
across the field. Well, I threw in the word
“carelessly” and thought Warbler? How
verbose and inaccurate we both were. . .
The cartilage of birds and bees signals
summer’s end. They were alive just a few
short moments ago. Under my massive feet,
I crunch their skulls and wings everywhere.
Peering through the open door of my bird
house, my helmet, my bee bonnet burst.
The swarm split open. Witness the royal
jelly strewn on my path. . . wildly, wildly.
published in Sweet: A Literary Confection, v3, Spring 2010
ST. GEORGE’S WALTZ
Bay kou bliye, pote mak sonje.
The giver of the blow forgets, the bearer of the scar remembers.
Creole proverb
He turned to her, quickly scanned
the room for his date. A hurricane
of pain took her left eye out.
He forgot to memorize
what was under her hair
as he lifted it. So soft clean
of her to shelter his face there.
Tirelessly searched in too-familiar places.
Gazed up from her paper on the subway.
Glanced down, on a bus, not his hands.
Shook her umbrella— eyed the couple
going into the restaurant.
The consciousness of her clothes
betrayed her. In the glare the neon
from the Haitian church bleated
from across the street,
Bel anteman pa di parade.
A beautiful funeral doesn't guarantee heaven.
She fingered her chain mail
skirt too short for dancing.
Recalled the taste of his spine
all the way down his dragon killer’s
back. Her words cut out of his tongue,
his words cut out of her voice.
She scraped, set into a hilt, licked
the falchion, the wine the wine
she mixed red red from his lips.
Lily-of-the-valley stretched
wide round his grandmama’s tree.
The scent wide round her waist
as she glided about the room.
The scent of her silence, the lilies
leapt from his blood. Traced
her perfumed arm, a liberator.
A champion, he raised it in a waltz.
His hairy curls, laughter, pleasure
stacked high in her. The phone left
off the cradle, the door locked tight.
His fire unkindled an unkempt race horse.
He lifted her to take her
joy, all she wanted was to learn
to dance. She was a tavern, a dance
hall of heartbeats spun around
his loving. A girl grown dizzy
with desire a loss, her limits
an abrasion of incapacity.
She knocks about in sweaty sleep.
Feverish with wakefulness,
she tracks his city, stones of night.
Dragging the streets wailing
awake the strike of her heart.
In a distinct body, an ambulance of grief.
Credit: All of Me, Booksmyth Press
TROPISM
for J.You’re free falling, my friend.
Hold fast to your parachute.
The grapeshot rattles the black
hole for your cells: white
waxing with fever that robs
every miniature moment of sleep.
Lovely, full, wounded,
a silken shirt of languid
sorrow, blue petals in my arms.
I dreamt of sores
beneath your tongue blue
diamonds in your jagged teeth.
I dreamt you
howling as they shot
your head full of holes.
I dreamt I made
a finger chain
of your bones.
Bind my mouth so I
can’t say. Unbind my heart
so I can understand.
Before the damage,
the honey of your body
was in command.
Devotion races into open
veins; me, so thin-skinned,
you, pulling alone, colorless.
I sent you letter after letter,
believing that I could write away
disaster, the armor of your
life’s winter suit; its size
and weight pinning your
wolfish body to this earth.
There must be thousands of us, beauty.
The selfish ones who ache some.
Our heads empty, hollow with words.
Credit: All of Me, Booksmyth Press
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