Winter ’21/’22 Issue Sneak Peek! - “Time Lapse” by Ari Banias

Ari Banias’s poem, “Time Lapse,” is a sneak peek into our next issue, forthcoming Winter ’21/’22—which we are excited to announce will be a double issue! Banias’s new collection, A Symmetry, is out October 12 with W. W. Norton.

Time Lapse

The beauty of my home
is that it moves

is how the thinking goes

70 years ago my grandfather trades a gold bracelet for an egg

A salt particle from the volcanic boulders
dissolves
reconstitutes

into terraces footpaths little heaps of goat turd

This year fascists ascend the mountains
to recruit again from the villages

a lamb will accept even
the hardest rind of bread

– do I sing this?

40 years ago adults dress me as a cowgirl with a lisp

After they call the cave holy
people throw empty water bottles in it

when the lights go out the cowgirl
and I

freed from legibility

stop trying to boil the sadness out of
dandelion greens

One coral reef digests
its closest neighbor

another coral reef

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Ari Banias is the author of A Symmetry (W. W. Norton, 2021), and Anybody (2016). He lives in Oakland.