Belated Bris of the Brainsick
Copyright © Lucas Crawford, 2019
all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, www.accesscopyright.ca, [email protected].
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Nightwood Editions acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country.
Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays.
We also gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Government of Canada and from the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
This book has been produced on 100% post-consumer recycled, ancient-forest-free paper, processed chlorine-free and printed with vegetable-based dyes.
Printed and bound in Canada.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Belated bris of the brainsick / Lucas Crawford.
Names: Crawford, Lucas, author.
Description: Poems.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190089369 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190089393 | ISBN 9780889713666 (softcover) | ISBN 9780889713673 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS8605.R43 B45 2019 | DDC C811/.6—dc23
1.
Belated Bris
Pick Your Poison, or, “Agency”
You’ve gotta take a bath, m’dear!
So what’ll it be: toy boat or bath beads?
This shirt or that? Frat or sorority?
Getting fresh or canned? Marching
band or the rugby squad? Salisbury
mistake or the over-overdone cod?
Now or later, either/or, more or less.
Confess or burn! Gordon Korman
or Where the Red Fern Grows?
Prose or poetry, science or art? Fart
or hold it (just for fun). Italics
or bold (Choose. One.). Comic Sans
or Papyrus; it’s so funny to know
there’s no life without this virus.
M psych ward roommate or F?
Bibliography or References?
I am not the source. But so glad
you asked about my preferences.
Becoming Mischling of the Second Degree on Suicidal Christmas
Mischling of the second degree:
A person with one Jewish grandparent; “mischling” is from the German for “mixed,” “half-breed”; what I am (a fact learned in my early thirties); something hidden in a tangle of abuse, booze, anti-Semitism, poverty and lies—knotted rosary beads sunk to the bottom of a rum tumbler; constitutive absence; the inscrutable wound over which I ran my tongue; the silence around which life was structured.
I.
My new name tag reads like a crime
and I know that’s a full sentence
even if my creed is inconsistency
Hi My Name Is… Mixed Feelings!
Nanny. A man named Block and she committed me in 1953.
I was not premeditated but their hot want
ought to stand up as malice aforethought.
Reckless engenderment of bastard granddaughter [sic]
but it took sixty-two years for them to get caught
between the sheets of their Liverpool Street sin. Are they
the syncopation in the beat to which I tap my feet
as I imagine life as a bail session from which to abscond?
At the bank trading in papyrus bonds
jaundiced babies point to me.
I’m mischling of the second degree
which means I’m not, legally, blond.
Punishment is time severed, guillotined hands
and heads, or the busted bamboo knots that bind
wrists to beds if one refuses one’s
