new from above/ground press: Tiny Grass Is Dreaming, by Chris Banks

Tiny Grass Is Dreaming
Chris Banks
$5

Tiny Grass Is Dreaming

says the sign on the lawn of the Buddhist temple,
in English, a few words lost in translation,
but something else found, a capacity for hope,
a little wonder, like saying another day, another holler
over the rooftops of the world. Yawp!
Come hither. No? I shall go thither, then.
I shall write my own sign and plant it on the lawn
of your house. It is meant to tell you
how much I envy you. The real you. The you you.
Not the Internet you. The you out there
posting selfies while the inner you just wants
what we all want: affirmation. My sign reads
Love me. I am dying. My teenage kids
are in the basement playing Truth or Dare?
Truth is a Dare in an age of neoliberal bullshit.
The Environmental Protection Act simply
another name for deforestation passed by a Senate
full of white, elderly men. The kind who hate
grandchildren. The future. Life occurs by accident.
In the midst of accidents. Penicillin was mold
in a petri dish. Coca-cola, a painkiller.
Matchsticks, an unexpected spark of ingenuity.
Like poetry, all things have stretch marks.
Something to make you think, and smile
as you lie in the warm sun— the green grass
dreaming the earth, dreaming life, dreaming even you,
and why, exactly? Because. The sign says so.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
July 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Chris Banks is an award-winning, Pushcart-nominated Canadian poet and author of seven collections of poems, most recently Alternator with Nightwood Editions (Fall 2023). 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, The Walrus, American Poetry Journal, The Glacier, Best American Poetry (blog), Prism International, among other publications. Chris was an associate editor with The New Quarterly, and is Editor in Chief of The Woodlot – A Canadian Poetry Reviews & Essays website. He lives with dual disorders–chronic major depression and generalized anxiety disorder–and writes in Kitchener, Ontario.

[Chris Banks will be launching Tiny Grass is Dreaming in Ottawa on August 10 as part of the above/ground press 31st anniversary reading, alongside Mahaila Smith, Gil McElroy, Pearl Pirie, Carlos A. Pittella and Shane Rhodes; tickets available here]

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