Two Poems by David Bankson
Together
The world fogged its lights
and draped gray in our eyes
like shuddering clouds
above a darksome land.
The day
heard the city awaken
and broken
as the land fractured apart from front to back,
the reflection in your eyes
gray catbirds deep in a shadowed forest.
I forgot
you walked these grounds before,
the clouds in your wake,
the shaky yesterdays
hungry for your smile,
a darkness for two,
the growing fog
and you,
before I happened along.
Before that,
candles fizzled
into a sulphur wisp.
After all this time
we’re stumbling here,
where a milk-and-water past
tolls.
I remember
you glowed like a phantom:
your fog to my smoke,
your eclipse to my night,
a fulcrum for a world of tomorrows.
What’s Left After Suicide
Lakes are nothing but the ground’s failure
to rise above. We measure entry wounds
only once death is rooted into flesh and bone
and hasn’t blown out the back.
Before the mind thinks its last -
a mountain just wide enough
to block what’s left of a family.
My uncle is saying something
about memory and purity from beyond.
I don’t remember what my cousin said
in his sleep about the suicide,
but it was a language
shared by the two of us.
Once life took us away, we forgot it all.
Body may not be the best word to describe a lake,
but it will do in this case.
Doubt may not float on water,
but what else to do with it but drown?
“Animal” doesn’t mean apathetic,
and “Man” doesn’t mean aesthetic.
The knob won’t turn when I want to see inside.
In the fugue they say the sky
is a solid hue of blue.
I’m listening.
I’m listening as if the sky were singing,
not in memory, euphoria, story. More about
the deep lake that reflects the sky,
bracing body against the bitter cold.
David Bankson lives in Texas. He was finalist in the 2017 Concīs Pith of Prose and Poem contest, and his poetry and microfiction can be found in concis, (b)oink, {isacoustic*}, Artifact Nouveau, Riggwelter Press, Five 2 One Magazine, etc.