New and Selected Poems, 1957-2011

Mr. Amnesia

58 MR. AMNESIA Even an amnesiac remembers some things better than others. In one past life I was a subway conductor for the Chicago subway system. In another I was—Gosh, I forgot! Anyway, some years ago, I was run over by a sports car. Ever since that time I find I cannot go more than a few days without leaving my body at least briefly and then coming back to it. Again and again. I can’t seem to stay in Chicago or in any city, for that matter, and in one body, for very long. I once wrote a forty-nine-line poem made up entirely of first lines, forty-nine beginnings. Forty-nine Beginnings it was called. I once met a young mother who had gone fishing with her two children. Coming up from the bottom of Lake Michigan, I got tangled up in their lines And they pulled me out and saved my life. The woman was my wife and the children were my children. “Making love, it’s always as if it were happening 59 “for the first time,” I said after ten years of marriage. “When a woman chooses an amnesiac as her husband, she has to expect things like that,” she laughed. “Still, there’s a lot to be said for ten years of foreplay.” An Instructor in Modern Poetry, I once lectured For four weeks as if each class was the first class of a new year. When the genial Chairman, manifesting polite alarm, Visited my classes, the occasion of his being there gave me the opportunity to teach as if those classes, too, were new classes. Promoted, given a raise, a bonus and a new two-year contract, even I was confused. Each class I taught became one in an infinite series of semesters, each semester Lasting no more than fifty minutes. I don’t know about you, but I hardly unpack and get ready for this lifetime and it’s time To move on to the next. I’ve been reincarnated three times, and am forty-nine years old and I don’t even know 60 my own name. History is just one of those things You learn to live without. I live in a city the entire population of which is made up of amnesiacs so for the first time in three lifetimes I feel at home. ...