In the Bathroom of the Summer House // Dark Sunday, Early Spring
Poetry by Emily Banks
In the Bathroom of the Summer House
That pink ceramic hand my father made
and screwed into the bathroom wall, in lieu
of a soap dish, its index finger crooked up,
beckoning — I had to unplug the drain
in the tub to keep the water running, drown
their noises out: mother licking sauce
from the serving spoon, lifting nightgown
to rub with lotion thighs, father sucking the juice
from an orange, eating it in clumps,
not separating segments how you should:
one from the left, one from the right, till two remain,
then both at once so none’s alone like an amputation.
I closed my eyes from it, face half-submerged,
one ankle up on each side of the faucet, toes
twisting to adjust the force of stream.
I wouldn’t hear them call, to ask me what I did in there
so long. Eventually, the fingers began to break off,
revealing chipped off-white inside the pink,
and the palm filled up with mouse droppings,
cupped those brown beads like an offering.
I found an infant mouse once in that room:
exposed pink skin, no hair yet, eyes sealed shut.
Its fingers curled to cling to mine, I thought
I’d nurse it back to health, I nursed it with the milk
drops in my hand, I crooned to it, didn’t I do
what I could? Its being was a heartbeat
when I found it and I stroked it still. At the end,
your muscles jerk in ways you didn’t know they could.
My calf would ache, head spun from hot
bathwater. I had used it all. My mother mixed me milk
with chocolate powder like for growing pains
that kept me awake as a child, when I was so afraid
I’d lose my legs and she’d make me imagine
they were melting butter, easing soft into a pot,
chunks boiling, breaking down in scalding broth.
Dark Sunday, Early Spring
Dreary day, the doves clean up
the balcony. Planting
is compulsive. It’s obvious
my heart’s been feeling like an empty pot
I fill with soil and seeds, the promise
of something new breaking through
the surface soon, shy and miraculous.
Because you know nothing
about nature, you’ll believe anything.
When the birds start to sing
I tell you they’re happy
because the sun is starting to come out
and they can eat without wetting
their feathers, though of course
I’ve no idea how they feel.
In this weather, it’s things I didn’t plant
that grow the best. This morning four
soft fat green sunflower sprouts
greeted me, young and impertinent.
I’ll have to pluck them out
one of these days. Bite their heads off
or throw them over the rail
to take their chances. Aren’t we all alone?
Stretching our bodies thin to meet the sun
when it’s the black soil, the clammy cold
spring rain that made us grow.
Emily Banks lives in Atlanta, where she is a doctoral candidate and poetry lecturer at Emory University. She received her MFA from the University of Maryland and her BA from UNC-Chapel Hill. Her poems have appeared in Superstition Review, Blood Orange Review, Yemassee, Cimarron Review, Muse/A Journal, storySouth, Free State Review, and other journals. Her first collection, Mother Water, is forthcoming from Lynx House Press.
