Lifted
by Craig Morgan Teicher

Well, I guess no one can have everything.
I must learn to celebrate when I fail.
Inner growth and fortitude follow the sting,
right? Won’t I rise with holy wind in my sails?
Yet they always seem to get what I want,
door after door flung open. Why are
the keepers of doors, who haunt
the hopeful halls of fate and desire
so partial to them, but not to me?
Yes, I do feel sorry for myself—don’t, brother,
pretend the bitter blanket of self-pity,
hasn’t warmed your bones. It’s not lovers
or fame I crave, nor even happiness, particularly.
Only to be lifted, just once, above all others.

About This Poem

“Poetry is, among other things, a place to let my demons graze. This, alas, is one of them: the voice of someone not inured to the regular wrist slaps of rejection that are part of the writer’s life. It’s also one of many sonnets I wrote during a period of time when I became a bit addicted to them. Beware of sonnets; they can be habit-forming.”
—Craig Morgan Teicher

Craig Morgan Teicher

Craig Morgan Teicher is the author of three books of poems, most recently The Trembling Answers (BOA Editions, 2017), winner of the 2018 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and We Begin in Gladness: How Poets Progress (Graywolf, 2018), his first book of essays. He works in publishing, teaches at NYU, and lives in New Jersey.