Encore
What is life if not an amalgam
of spent moments and lattes?
A bell-curve of childhood
traumas?
A star-map of premonitions?
Most art is a few flowers
growing
amongst garbage. O Tik-tok!
O Snapchat! O psalm of selfies!
Every elegy is like digging a
grave
in one’s own brain filled with
cherry blossoms. Expired
coupons.
Moonlight. I would die of
longing
but who would pick up my
prescriptions?
When the miracle happened,
I was knee-deep in schmaltz.
Watch the movies. Drink the
wine.
Suffer the radio’s static. Each
day
is a staring contest the sky
wins.
I’m here because my ancestors
eloped with fire long ago.
The day’s dreck is tolerable
because of the night’s carnal
whimpers.
Pencil-in beauty marks, skin
cancer.
What I have learned in fifty years
is zilch x the imagination x
freedom
equals a cornucopia of awed
thought.
Flash your ticket at the stage door.
You will love the big finale.
The encore.
Its mash-up of blood and
nostalgia.
I’ve heard the appliances
singing - each to each-
but I don’t think they sing for
me.
What good is listening? Master
disorder
or stay on the line. Derangement
is the promise of the whole.
Chris Banks is
a Canadian poet and author of five collections of poems, most recently Midlife
Action Figure by ECW Press 2019. His first full-length collection, Bonfires,
was awarded the Jack Chalmers Award for poetry by the Canadian Authors’
Association in 2004. Bonfires was also a finalist for the Gerald Lampert
Award for best first book of poetry in Canada.
His poetry has appeared in The New Quarterly, Arc Magazine,
The Antigonish Review, Event, The Malahat Review, Prism
International, among other publications. He lives and writes in Waterloo,
Ontario.
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