i told raw. — by Kari Teicher
for Li-Young Lee and his poem “Persimmons”
he asks me for a story.
I can tell him anything, new or old
with Easter candy, we lie naked
feet-up, feet-down
and I tell him about the first grade
when Miss Moss sent me
to the principal,
made me show how I twisted
my shirt around, made my
tank top
into a
bra.
how to explain
Shania Twain is your idol.
the secretary gave me ice
to chew or press to my skin:
this is how we healed all wounds in
elementary school.
other things
that got me into trouble were
telling people that my sister was a
lesbian when she was not,
back when I was scared I might be a
lesbian and I was not ready for
what my father called a hard life.
the time I convinced my fourth grade
teacher that my psychoanalyst
prescribed a math hiatus,
and I did no equations for 4 months.
my mother said I was trouble, that I was
too much like her, too wild.
once, she caught me watching pornography
leaning hard on the edge of a chair, I lied
but she just laughed at me,
trouble, too much, too wild.
he passes me an Easter candy egg
asks, Can you eat this kind?
No, it’s milk chocolate. but I do.
oh, the eulogy of the lying girl
the lesbian, the farm,
my unwashed hands.
these stories I’ve spun a hundred times
eyes closed. these lies I told raw.
some things never leave a person:
the laughter of your mother,
the pleading of your father,
the boy who knows your stories, all.
This poem was featured in Issue 07 of Canthius.
kari teicher writes fiction, poetry, and complains. a recent graduate from the mfa at the university of victoria and the ba at the university of king's college, she has studied fiction and poetry on both coasts of canada. she was a finalist in room magazine's poetry contest 2019, longlisted for the cbc short story prize 2018, longlisted for cv2's young buck poetry prize 2018, winner of saltern magazine's short forms contest 2017. her work has been published with the puritan, room magazine, joypuke ii, dalhousie gazette, saltern magazine, incite magazine, fathom and others. her next story is forthcoming in event magazine. kari lives in toronto with her bull terrier, and she works in communications and production. she is at work on her debut novel about snag, yukon.