Two Poems by Ahana Banerji

Fishers

after García Lorca

Tonight, Federico is in a fish market.
We study men scabbing scales off salmon, weighing a pound of cheek
against a gavel. He’s pretending not to notice me.

He has been trying to fry angelfish in the moon for the past half an hour.
I’ve just found the liver to tell him it is as possible
as bludgeoning freckles to a son or restoring a voice to seasalt.

The moon, smooth as a sleeping back, understands the pressure
of unseen things and curves duly. Once, it blared so bright
I thought it was electric. This secret lives in me like a streetlight:

passed under, spinal, a constant in darkness.
Federico winks at me, angelfish still raw and anointed.
Tells me to find my stomach.

Apology

after Edna St. Vincent Millay

And there will always be new cold
on the windowsill, new gentle
splintered fingernail, the little frost.
So razor fresh. So crocus fresh.

I am sorry for the iris heat of yesterday
and nothing more. I mistake
a riverbed knuckled with fish
for something simple. I, too, will be

good. Good
as the jugular’s perfect hyacinth.
Small budding. Smalling disappointments.
I know. And I am not resigned.

Ahana Banerji is an undergraduate student reading English at Magdalene College, Cambridge. She is a three-time Foyle Young Poet and the youngest shortlisted poet for the White Review Poet’s Prize in 2022. Most recently, her work has been published in The White Review, Zindabad Zine, and Anthropocene. Her debut pamphlet is forthcoming with Nine Pens Press later this year.