Bean Sí
By Michael McKeown Bondhus
The first time I heard her keening,
I was lying under dark covers,
aching with dysphoria, but
the next morning everyone
was still alive, so I went back
to obsessing about
the body parts
that made me suffer but which I kept
because my lover said he loved them.
The bean sí wailed nightly,
and after two weeks I stopped
expecting death and started having dreams
about a mummy beneath a bog,
its preserved body perfect and just
the way I wanted mine to be.
My lover said I looked tired, so
I took medicine to stop dreaming,
moaned pleasure when he touched me
where I hated being touched.
I tried to love those places, I really did.
Ask my therapist and she'll tell you
how the bean sí's wails found their way
through the prerecorded thunderstorms
I used to help me sleep,
how the dreams turned into
visions, my friends and coworkers
transformed into beautiful mummies
with mouths full of grinding teeth.
My lover took off before the surgery.
The bean sí finally left after my unwanted
parts were given Christian burial
in a landfill for medical waste.
In Irish folklore, the bean sí (banshee) is the spirit of a woman whose wailing signals impending death, either of the hearer or a member of their family.
Source: https://rhinopoetry.org/buy/rhino-2023
Categories: Featured Poems from Our Subscribers
