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.