Wednesday, July 1, 2020

Dale Tracy : On Shazia Hafiz Ramji’s “MEMORY IS THE FIRST WAR”


MEMORY IS THE FIRST WAR


I saw the fist of sunset rip into the clouds
the eggshell glitch of closed eyelids  
open to the trust of family       
my first week back
from detox       you picked me up   drove me
home       other families on the highway too
but I built the most fantastic house
               I built that house      
all on my own    look mom
look dad    look little sister   look at that
house      look at that           squeegee-kid             
coming to clean our windows
look at him    bent and muddy        druggie    
don’t give him money            I said   
I closed my eyes      
to make my home      the light turned green
and I thanked god          but I was asking
yes I was asking          for you to keep your money
safe     from people like me   
you see   mom   I cleaned windshields     
I didn’t want to be him in front of you
so I called him a druggie myself    
in the car   in this poem  
not in our car on Lougheed Highway
not in our car on Brunette Avenue
           when you called him druggie   in real life  
I heard only air whistling
like the prayer that gave me              six-days clean
I heard you choosing to forget            all the air it took
to keep me alive    and I couldn’t let you forget  
because you are my mother  
your flesh and blood have written    my knots and smile
and if I didn’t love you so much    I couldn’t have
written this poem    I couldn’t have put myself in your mouth to say    
druggie     I couldn’t have played at that story of sacrifice
love and family  
made for the father and son on a mountain
where the goat or the ram or the sheep takes the place
of the trusting son  
the story almost made for the first-born daughter in a Toyota
made for the sacrificial animal      the stain of its flagging tongue
that is memory   that has always been
the first war
between us.


“Memory Is the First War” opens by juxtaposing two other openings: first the speaker sees the clouds open and then she sees herself open her eyes: “I saw the fist of sunset rip into the clouds / the eggshell glitch of closed eyelids / open to the trust of family” (1-3). The sunset hitting closed eyelids creates the “eggshell glitch” of visible veins. The poem contrasts this breakage (these veins cracking through the lids) and malfunction (closed eyes shouldn’t see anything) with the eyes “open[ing] to the trust of family.” But if trust opens the speaker’s eyes like the aggressive “fist of sunset rip[s]” open the clouds, trust does not rule out hostility (as the poem’s title likewise warns).
As her family brings her back from detox, the speaker recalls the work she first had to do on her own: “other families on the highway too / but I built the most fantastic house /        I built that house / all on my own” (6-9). Yes, other cars on the highway hold families, but the speaker’s superlative house would hold her family fantastically. “Fantastic” can mean excellent but also unreal. No one can build a family all on one’s own, and this poem tells us what happens when the speaker brings the fantastic house she built in detox into her real family space, on the way to her real home. Note that the implied glitch or breakdown of this fantastic house does not occur through contact with that real home. The poem relates an event occurring in a transition space—toward home, on the road. What happens in this car doesn’t deny “the trust of family” but demonstrates what a difficult transition this return is.
The difficult transition, performed throughout by glitchy spacing, appears in shifting language about the house. The speaker alters “the” house to “that” house, repeating the direction “look” to ultimately shift the object of attention: “look at that / house      look at that           squeegee-kid / coming to clean our windows / look at him” (10-13). “That house” becomes “that squeegee-kid,” the first move in a series of substitutions in “that story of sacrifice / love and family” (35-36).
The speaker claims to betray the squeegee-kid for her own security: “druggie / don’t give him money           I said / I closed my eyes / to make my home” (13-16). Like the “fantastic house” she built, the home she makes with this comment is vulnerable. A home made by closed eyes is subject to the “eggshell glitch.” Closed eyelids contrast with what the speaker and the squeegee-kid have in common: they both “cleaned windshields” (20). A clean windshield is like an open eye and like “six-days clean” (28). “Wind” reminds me of “all the air it took / to keep [the speaker] alive” (29-30) and of the “air whistling / like the prayer that gave” her those clean days (27-28). It’s through this windshield that the speaker and her family will first see their home again when they return there.
The betrayal that threatens the family’s open eyes is an invented substitution for a different one. The speaker first explains, “I didn’t want to be him in front of you / so I called him a druggie myself” (21-22). But instead of letting her family’s gaze make her “be him” (another “druggie”), the speaker builds this poem to make sure her family can’t forget that he is nevertheless “people like me” (19). She worries her family is closing their eyes to the struggle she has just undertaken in detox: “I heard you choosing to forget     all the air it took / to keep me alive    and I couldn’t let you forget” (29-30). Pursuing this requirement to remember, the poem performs its central substitution: “I called him a druggie myself / in the car   in this poem,” but “in real life” her mother spoke (22-23, 26). The speaker builds this poem with open eyes: “if I didn’t love you so much    I couldn’t have / written this poem     I couldn’t have put myself in your mouth to say / druggie” (33-35). In this intimate substitution, the daughter takes the place of the mother to fight a war of memory, which is also a form of loving trust.
This daughter-for-mother substitution story puts itself in the place of a different substitution story, the mother and “first-born daughter” replacing the “father and son on a mountain / where the goat or the ram or the sheep takes the place / of the trusting son” (40, 37-39). When the mother names the squeegee-kid “druggie,” she sacrifices him in place of her daughter. To forget “all the air it took” for her daughter to be in this car on the way home (not outside it, cleaning its windows), she finds someone else struggling for air and dismisses that person and his struggle with a word. To sacrifice memory, the mother conceptually sacrifices the squeegee-kid. As in the original sacrifice story, this sacrifice might be an attempt to prove trust, here by forgetting detox as though it never happened.
But the speaker “couldn’t let you forget.” The daughter rejects the substitution: “I didn’t want to be him in front of you / so I called him a druggie myself.” To prevent the sacrifice of memory, the daughter takes the mother’s place to sacrifice the squeegee-kid with the dismissive word—but she makes this sacrifice in a poem that shows the substitutions and keeps the memory. The poem’s work undoes the sacrifice. The speaker only “played at that story of sacrifice” that is only “almost made” for her (35, 40). In this poem that substitutes a poetic sacrifice for the real one, the “sacrificial animal” is ultimately the poem itself. In its last lines, this animal leaves “the stain of its flagging tongue / that is memory / that has always been / the first war / between us” (41-44). When the speaker ventriloquizes her mother, she leaves “druggie” in this poem as her own tongue’s stain, which is ultimately the poem’s own stain. The stain is the memory that can’t be wiped out, which her family needs to see with open eyes. At this point, the speaker is no longer the sacrificial animal, but the trusting daughter who makes this play in the war of memory for her own “flesh and blood” (32), for “love and family.”

Note to Readers
I appear here as a reader of these poems offering models of response, aiming to open up possibilities for other readers. I’ve connected with the poets, and I’d now love to connect with other readers. How do you respond to these poems? Do you have questions or comments about my readings? Or about this project? Please get in touch with me at deicticpress@gmail.com.

Works Cited
“Dynamics” Oxford English Dictionary Online, Oxford UP, 2020.
Gardner, Callie. Zarf Poetry, https://zarfpoetry.tumblr.com/.
“Orbit.” Oxford English Dictionary Online, Oxford UP, 2020.
“Parabolic.” Oxford English Dictionary Online, UP, 2020.





Shazia Hafiz Ramji’s writing has appeared in Best Canadian Poetry 2019, THIS magazine, Best Canadian Poetry 2018, and is forthcoming in EVENT, and Maisonneuve, and Gutter: the magazine of new Scottish and international writing. Her poetry and prose have been nominated for the 2020 Pushcart Prizes by Poetry Northwest and carte blanche, respectively. Shazia was named as a “writer to watch” by the CBC. She is the author of Port of Being, a finalist for the 2019 Vancouver Book Award, BC Book Prizes (Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize), Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, and winner of the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. She is a columnist for Open Book and is at work on a novel.

Dale Tracy, a contract faculty member, is an assistant professor in the Department of English, Culture, and Communication at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario. She is the author of With the Witnesses: Poetry, Compassion, and Claimed Experience (McGill-Queen’s, 2017) and the chapbooks Celebration Machine (Proper Tales, 2018) and The Mystery of Ornament (above/ground, 2020). She received an honourable mention in Kalamalka Press’s 2019 John Lent chapbook award contest.

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