Why Poetry: A Partial Autobiography ["How tense it makes me, reading..."]

By Craig Morgan Teicher
How tense it makes me, reading
poetry, knowing how much I miss, misunderstand,
how only some of the words
resolve under my eyes
                                             into sentences
while others slip by unnoticed,
like a note inscribed on a greeting card
by an aunt who never knew me well.
What I mean is the job is never
done, I’m never through. And I’m not made
for tasks that linger; some
of me is always considering
all the money I owe
to banks and credit card companies
and the kid
                    who kindly bought
me most of my high school lunches
because my dad forgot to send me to school
with a couple of bucks.
                                             Which is of course to say
reading poetry is a metaphor.
Nothing ever
finishes.
 
~
 
So why did I choose poetry?
Maybe because it acknowledges right away
what scares me most,
how the line breaks before
the thought is done, how the line,
a partial thing,
is the measure,
and it’s never enough. My
                                             college love
never did come running back
after I sent her
that photocopied pamphlet
of heartbroke verses,
                                        and my lamentation
did not un-injure my son or
get me back my job.
 
~
 
I woke up panting and confused
from the same nightmare over and over
through childhood—I can’t remember when
it stopped: my task was to build
with colored blocks atop
                                             a floating green
island a kind of little city;
this was urgent—there would be no
forgiveness if it was not complete.
The dream ended
                                   with me standing before
this hovering shard of land
as it hovered away,
my job still undone, and I was
dropped back into my bed to
beg my mother
                              for something she could
understand but not give.
 
It’s hard now not to see it as
a premonition, maybe a preparation
for her dying only a few years
later, her life, my life
like all lives, unfinished.
 
~
 
And so I came to poetry.
 

Copyright Credit: Craig Morgan Teicher, "Why Poetry: A Partial Autobiography" from The Trembling Answers.  Copyright © 2017 by Craig Morgan Teicher.  Reprinted by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.
Source: The Trembling Answers (BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org, 2017)