Some days you forget despair’s tractor-pull
long enough to see some little boy go
vroom vroom with a toy car. Joy is
invisible, everywhere, like microplastics
in drinking water. Sure, children are
in concentration camps, the rivers are
polluted, a work colleague gets some
horrible disease, but joy’s rumble is felt
beneath what is rotten. Why is there
no god of Optimism? Ancient rites
of happiness? That we are mostly quarks
and water, but still feel joy is a bonafide
miracle. Blood hymns in sunshine.
Joy plunges its little dagger of shivers
over and over, into our hearts. Joy is
the surprise, after the surprise, after
apocalyptic narratives. I’m for joy getting
its own Nobel Prize. Buy the stilettos,
the travertine countertops if it makes
you happy, the antique desks and DJ
equipment while there is time. Look,
I built this joy out of my imagination.
It is full of gold lamé, peacock feathers,
even toy cars. Vroom vroom.
Chris Banks
Chris Banks is a Canadian poet and author of five collections of poems. His first full-length collection, Bonfires, was awarded the Jack Chalmers Award for poetry by the Canadian Authors' Association in 2004.