TO KEEP LOVE BLURRY
TO KEEP LOVE BLURRY
POEMS BY
CRAIG MORGAN TEICHER
AMERICAN POETS CONTINUUM SERIES, NO. 135
BOAEDITIONS,LTD.ROCHESTER,NY 2012
Copyright © 2012 by Craig Morgan Teicher
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition
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Publications by BOA Editions, Ltd.—a not-for-profit corporation under section 501 (c) (3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code—are made possible with funds from a variety of sources, including public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency; the Literature Program of the National Endowment for the Arts; the County of Monroe, NY; the Lannan Foundation for support of the Lannan Translations Selection Series; the Mary S. Mulligan Charitable Trust; the Rochester Area Community Foundation; the Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester; the Steeple-JackFund; the Ames-Amzalak Memorial Trust in memory of Henry Ames, Semon Amzalak and Dan Amzalak; and contributions from many individuals nationwide. See Colophon on page 112 for special individual acknowledgments.
Cover Design: Sandy Knight
Cover Art: Jorge Queiroz
Interior Design and Composition: Richard Foerster
Manufacturing: McNaughton & Gunn
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Teicher, Craig Morgan, 1979–
To keep love blurry : poems / by Craig Morgan Teicher. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (American Poets Continuum Series ; 135)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-934414-94-1
I. Title.
PS3620.E4359T65 2012
811'.6—dc23
2012014339
BOA Editions, Ltd.
250 North Goodman Street, Suite 306
Rochester, NY 14607
www.boaeditions.org
A. Poulin, Jr., Founder (1938–1996)
For Cal and Simone—you should know that it’s a lot more fun than these
poems suggest—
and
for Brenda, who knows...
Contents
BOOK ONE: LIFE STUDIES
Part One
The Prince of Rivers
Father
Mother
Confession
It Came from the Primordial Ooze
Action Reaction
Variations on the Moment of Apprehending the Extent of One’s Responsibilities
Motherhood
Anger
Part Two
On His Bed and No Longer Among the Living
Part Three
To an Editor Who Said I Repeat Myself and Tell Too Much
Get Out
“Sometimes We Sleep Well in the Midst of Terrible Grief”
My Mom, d. 1994
Quatrains Until Dawn
Part Four
I
Goodbye Girls
Late Poem
Narcissus and Me
Smoking
Friendship
Other Women
Masturbation
Jazz
The Middle Generation
Money Time
Layoff
Lines in the Rain
II
The Meantime
The Darkness Echoing
Home
Fame
The Past Ahead
Like an Answer, Yes
BOOK TWO: A CELEBRATION
Beginnings for an Essay in Spite of Itself
Grief: A Celebration
Notes
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Colophon
BOOK ONE: LIFE STUDIES
“Those blessèd structures, plot and rhyme—
why are they no help to me now...”
—Robert Lowell
“so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost...”
—Elizabeth Bishop
“They are more fathers than sons themselves now.”
—Donald Justice
PART ONE
The Prince of Rivers
In the land of rivers I was the prince of rivers.
In the land of houses I lived in a thousand houses.
In the land of scattered bones my bones were scattered
by worshipful princes who carried each one like a scepter.
I was there and a breeze eddied around me.
In the land of questions I was the subject of questions.
I’m sorry what was lost was found utterly changed.
I could see through the sky and bring down the lonely stars.
When I was happy, lambs were born. They stood up
enacting their first dance of balance. In the land of frost
I was never cold. A warm breeze eddied around me.
When I thundered the sky tore like paper. Beyond the sky
the sky tore and rain fell into the moon’s dark holes.
In the land of eagles I received messages from eagles.
I’m sorry the moon is a fake gray plate. I’m sorry the day
is so dark. In the land of the future I saw men of stone.
When I was sad all the seas swelled. The islands
were swallowed and forgotten; books were drenched and forgotten.
When I was old my hair was as long as my story.
I’m sorry the branch bearing fruit is so high.
When I was young trees arched toward me like I was the sun.
I’m sorry the dead are quiet as ash. I’m sorry what’s left is so cold.
I knew I could escape through a hole in the sky. Wherever
I wept thick stalks grew. I knew I could weep for a long time to come.
Father
“You think too much—it’s what I’ve always said.
There’s nothing new you’ll find by looking in your head,
no encoded family secrets, no incestuous kiss
from a molested aunt. It’s just exactly this,
just memories less in focus when remembered again,
modified, chipped into kindling for fear—
I’ve spent most of my life afraid, being unclear
about whether an honest mistake counts as a sin,
and what the consequences were of hurtful things I did.
There are no big answers, no revelations.
Isn’t my life proof enough that anything I hid
I lost? I’ll die, and so will you, without explanations.
I’m no model, but do go for things you can touch—
souvenir snow globes, girls. You think too much.”
Mother
“‘I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead’—you’ve said
so so many times. You wear my death like a birthmark.
It’s not what I intended, but I do let it go to my head
occasionally. God knows I was modest in life.
But is my death enough to motor all your days, to spark
enough imagination and verve to sustain your son and wife?
Does it really excite you and keep you awake
to the world at hand? Maybe. You’ve managed to make
a little name for yourself, and you’re funny,
which is a surprise. You were always a good writer,
so nothing’s shocking there, and you even make some money!
But obsessing over me—I’m afraid it keeps you slighter...
But this is not the kind of stuff I would have said.
It’s your call. This is you talking to you—I’m dead.”
Confession
Lowell did it best because he understood
that even when his art was saying I’ve been bad,
he had to make himself look good.
No one loves a truly self-loathing lad,
though one and all are charmed
by a man’s interest in his own evil,
which he puts on show for those he’s harmed
or those who haven’t been but hope they will
be. Daredevil, rock star, martyr-circus-freak,
he sets himself on fire every night,
doused later as the audience cries, how unique.
It’s a trick they like; he’s perfectly alright,
because he’s in love with himself, playing hate.
True self-haters perform to empty houses, late.
It Came from the Primordial Ooze
The mind is so big it’s easy to get lost in thought,
big as a grapefruit, or like an astonishing
house bigger on the inside than its frame
could possibly contain. I remember something
I’d forgot and wonder what it got lost behind,
beneath, around, about. Books are divided
into pages, stacked and bound, because no one
can read one all at once, hence chapters
and why a good song is just three minutes long,
as if a kind of mind can only think
so much, which explains why an octopus
can learn to open a jar but not drive a car.
A voice answers most questions the self asks
the self, but where does he go when
the self says I know? If I write down everything
I think and string the sentences end to end,
how many times around the world can I wrap my mind?
The caption says a blue whale has a heart
as big as a Volkswagen, and the photo below
makes him look kind. A man has a heart
as small as a ball that pumps blood for miles
and feels what the mind can’t understand,
while the mind mixes its metaphors to
outdistance the reach of the hand.
Action Reaction
My actions define me—is that true?
Or am I saved by the helpful notion
that I’m good by nature, despite what I do?
What if I’m forced to do something I don’t want to?
Or practically forced—coerced. The unceasing promotion
of the idea we have control—is that ever true?
Like what if it’s not my act but evil that might ensue?
Am I accountable for some disaster I unwittingly set in motion?
Not if I’m good by nature, despite what I do...
Even if I knowingly did wrong and, without apology, flew,
shouldn’t deeper love of me inspire devotion?
If my actions define me isn’t it also true
that love should redeem? Otherwise, why favor virtue?
Why not shrug and say I’m susceptible to every emotion
by nature—often I can’t control what I do
and had no say, of course, in the cards I drew.
Wrong and right choices are alike as drops in an ocean.
Contradiction defines me—that’s obviously true,
even if nature made me good. Does it matter what I do?
Variations on the Moment of Apprehending the Extent of One’s Responsibilities
1
that minute subdivision of time
during which the full consequence
flickers, just before the door clicks
shut but just after you could have
stopped it from shutting, when
you realize, your hand already
seizing your empty pocket, that
you have left your keys inside
2
that useless subdivision of time
in which what really happens
could never have been
prevented—it yawns so wide
though you can barely fit
a blink into it, like the moment
just before the door clicks shut
but just after you realize
3
you have left your keys inside.
So many things are unsatisfactory,
like the moment, like the baby
monitor, like your hand already
seizing your empty pocket,
useless. Consequence
flickers, what really happens
could fit behind a blink
4
that useless subdivision of time
in which what happens could fit,
flickers, could never have been
prevented, is so unsatisfactory
like the moment just before
the door clicks shut but just after
you could have stopped it from
closing with the back of your foot
5
your hand already seizing
your empty pocket, as if you could
go back, your keys inside,
and begin again, take your clothes
off, crawl back, deep into bed.
So many things are unsatisfactory—
that you have left your keys inside,
that this is when you realize
6
this could never have been
prevented, that what you realize
is not only useless but infinitely
painful, because minute,
irrevocable, like the baby
who flickers in the video monitor,
a blink in which the door clicks shut.
You could never have stopped it
7
till now, just after you realize
so many things are unsatisfactory,
just before, your hand already
seizing your empty pocket,
the full consequence flickers
behind a blink that is now
your measure of time, useless
because it already happened.
Motherhood
Was my mother very beautiful? No, not especially.
So why did I always seek out very pretty girls
with pillowy breasts and curves to mother me?
My desire cross-wired with a son’s need for care,
which might explain my mother-hunting in the curls
of redheads’ and brunettes’ hair.
I’m giddy to talk about my losses and pain
—plain and hurt is hotter than merely plain—
as if to say take your time, listen, bandage me;
I’m bleeding now, but don’t rush, I will always be.
I never got laid with lines like these, which was the way
I think it was supposed to work, like it would betray
my mother to actually have a lover. But don’t worry,
I’m married now, the conventional way to keep love blurry.
Anger
Before meeting you, I had never been as angry
as I get in our weekly fight. Was all that bile
always simmering in me, my pressurized vial
of hell awaiting an excuse to blow? You set free
something mean, something that likes to hurt.
Fighting is exciting; it makes fire from doubt.
Of course, I’m also copying you—your curt
reply to whatever I say, followed by a bout
of crazed yelling—barely hidden, our worst
selves leap giddily out, and if we’re both ashamed,
we’d never say so, unless the other says so first.
But no harm done after a day or two. I’ve blamed
you, but I’m grateful, really. When we fight,
like a tantrum-fresh child, I’m powerful, aliv
e, right.
PART TWO
On His Bed and No Longer Among the Living
1
Reading and writing are much the same activity: words employed to carry some part of the world or the mind across the divide that separates the two. When I want to write, I read, and when I want to read, I write, so I have been reading The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald. Sebald’s novel is a kind of travelogue that follows a journey through English towns, recounting the events and thoughts that preoccupy the traveler. The boundaries between fact and fiction are impossible to discern. The book is illustrated throughout with photographs, which seem to give credence to the factual basis of the narrative, though the book is called a work of fiction, and the photographs only vaguely correspond to the text. The principal thread is the passage of time: things lost, passed away, diminutively regained and reimagined. The Empress Dowager, the Irish Civil War, a deceased friend, a scale model of the temple of Jerusalem.
Perhaps, in telling his story, Sebald does not participate in it. Perhaps the narrator is Sebald, perhaps not. Perhaps what moves me most about the book is the way in which Sebald is unafraid to take part in his story, to tell only his version of certain events. Perhaps I’m drawn most to detachment. Everything in Sebald’s vision finds a relation to everything else, no matter how seemingly distant ideas, objects, people, and memories may be. Disparate voices are all one. Sebald’s voice is rare: the voice of a calm mourner, one always accepting of the steady slipping away of everything it can and can’t articulate. Sebald seems to be the observer, rather than the writer, of his story. What more could a mourner want than the cool capacity to simply watch without longing? More than the return of all that was lost—that is impossible—the bereaved wish to observe loss happening to them. In life, loss happens too fast to see—it’s over before one can know it began; the bereaved want to watch loss defining them.
What is a story? Is it different from the narrative made by stringing together a series of memories? Is it the voice of the teller that unifies the story? If I am the author of my story, is this my voice, because it is the voice that speaks the story? To what extent do I choose to take part in the events I am about to recount? Do I choose to tell them, or do I do so because they are all that is available to me and I want to say something, to bring something into being and so define myself? My mother died when I was fourteen; she exists now in the fact of my making. Is my mother a story? Is she, as Sebald says, A treasure house that existed purely in his head and to which there is no access except through the letters on the page? Was she always, even before she died?
To Keep Love Blurry Page 1