Melissa Gurley Bancks

Poetry
by
Melissa Gurley Bancks

 

To the Parking Attendant

In Memoriam Teresa 1965-1999

Thank you
for asking,

for not ignoring my sputtering,

for making change
and placing dimes in my palm
like pieces of delicate glass;

thank you for guarding that glowing booth
like a sentinel
in the polluted dark of a hospital parking garage
black as the river Styx;

for the way you watched me drive
beneath the raised bridge of metal arm,
the path to my friend now permanently gated.

for you:
sentry
guardian

for the warm lake of your gaze
as your eyes followed my car,
and lit my windows.

Affair

In Louisiana swampland, moss climbs the trees' slick skin like snakes;
it dangles goats' beards from branches, the thin trunks shoved shoulder to shoulder
like whispering, sentient beings.

Tonight, the breeze steals the swamp's breath.  Steam swims
on brackish water's black surface
and escapes.
Shadows bathe and change shapes beneath a pregnant moon
while you and I,
in this moment stolen from lives of sameness,
slide into and out of each other's secrets, safe in the gossamer mist.
The slow notes of a saxophone bellow hoarse ballads through distant windows.

A wet wind stirs-a reminder; with regret, we separate into two selves.
The moss shakes its ghostly gray limbs like fingers pointing
while the night sky beats clear and blue as a pulse.
And we wonder, 
Did we make a life tonight-
or take one?

Though our hair wriggles with live serpents
and bittersweet apple taste lingers on our lips,
we hold each other a moment more in the evanescent mist.

In Louisiana swampland, nothing turns to stone. 

Autumn

When the duck lost her drake,
she cried for three days,
combing the tall grass,
waddling round the chicken coop,
beak flapping at the kitchen windows.

Now she burrows her brown head
in her wing feathers
and sleeps alone under the elm,
the othr ducks strung like pearls
around the pond.

Invitation to be Buried

Let's drive west
until the mountains climb
blue triangles above us
as we burrow beneath,
wrapping our bodies
in magnesium,
breathing in coal,
exhaling gold.

You and I
know the same sadness,
what it means to need
to be buried at the base of a mount,
or to feel corn or soybean
spring from our feet and fingers.

Let's sink down in the soil

under green corn stalks
and suck the wet, fertile dirt
in our lungs
until it stops our mouths
and clots our eyes
with visions.

St. Genevieve and I

At dawn
as I drove past the church,
I saw the sign for St. Genevieve Duchamp.

She called to me,
each letter of her name
like a different note opening.
So I rose to take her hand,
left my car parked on the street,
my blouse dangling from a tree limb.

She called to me
and we danced in the bushes,
St. Genevieve and I,
hiked our skirts well above our knees;
we laughed and stomped grapes
in the manicured shrubs
outside her church gates,
ignored the nuns,
the priests,
all
the orderly,
the traffic of teachers
on their way to work.

We let our hair move loose
like birds' wings
and celebrated the sky
open with wild, orange light.
The wind was bliss.

We sang soprano and alto,
played hymns at perfect pitch,
sterling light burned 
behind the stained glass
in the chapel windows.

And we loved,
there,
in the bushes,
          became
each
          other.
Naked.  Redeemed.

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