by Cynthia Cruz
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/erstling I love when it reaches the beginning of the month and it is time for a new blog post. Browsing through Cruz’s poems, looking for just the right one to comment on is a highlight in my busy, chaotic world. Today’s almost disturbing, eerie, and perfect selection, is called “Erstling.” After the brief, all important scan of the poem, I quickly realized that all the words were familiar to me, except the title, “Erstling.” It constantly stands out to me that Cruz’s poems always lead me to the Google bar where I must search and explore to unlock the inner workings of each and every wonderful work. “Erstling” means, in German, first-born. This makes sense with Cruz’s heritage and follows along with the childlike imagery and memories conjured up in the following lines. Speaking of the lines, let’s dive into them. Exploration is the best way to come to know, well, anything! “Death is a beige Mercedes sedan.” The very first line is already so cryptic and yet conjures up an immediate image. Buckle up kids, its time to travel to yet another world so artfully conjured up by the mind of Ms. Cruz. So we hear this line and there is this image of “a beige Mercedes sedan”, of course, but there are also so many questions that pop up begging to be answered. Why is Death “a beige Mercedes sedan”? Is this literal or metaphorical or both? As to quell the impatient questions, I feel you can take it as both. The “beige Mercedes sedan” symbolizes Death, but it also is a mechanism for Death. I mean cars are basically giant metal death traps that we risk our lives in everyday by entering them and sharing the road with millions of other people, trusting that they won’t hurt us, but yet accidents happen. And an accident has happened here. Because of a Mercedes sedan, somebody was killed. We do not know who yet, but that is what the rest of the poem is for. I also want to draw attention to the color. It isn’t any old Mercedes sedan, but a beige one. A blah colored one, a washout in the world surrounding it. This evokes the feeling of faded memories, perhaps ones the speaker wishes to forget. “I am five and riding/In the back” composes the next two lines. As usual, Cruz provides us with very short snippets of images. I want to make a quick detour here. I was exploring Cynthia Cruz’s personal blog when I found this part of this post, “placing one image next to another on the wall and seeing what meaning I can conjure.” I thought this was fascinating because it is exactly what she does in her poetry. There are so many snapshots of memories or images that form together to discover a meaning. Truth be told, I almost write these blog posts the same way, pushing together snapshots and words to hopefully find a meaning somewhere near the end. The second and third lines provide us of the image of a small child in the back of the Deathmobile (the “beige Mercedes sedan”). Now we get a stronger idea that this is a faded memory, something the speaker is conjuring up from childhood, most likely a traumatic event. We also know that the speaker is the one acting/remembering in the poem because of the word “I.” This creates another sense of connection to the scene that is unfolding as we travel through each line. WARNING, more images ahead! “Eating small white chocolates” immediately gives action to the character in this novel. Again, we have a sense of color, albeit a blah one. There is nothing striking of these chocolates, they are just small and white. This “gray” faded world is continued on with “My long, thin body,” another portrayal of something or someone that makes them seem insignificant. There is just this small, thin child in the backseat of a car eating small, white chocolates. While detailed images, they are not vivid. There is no brightness, no flashes of life or color. It is faded, it is old, but still ominous with the presence of the first line. An depressing, creepy first line is then followed by imagery of a distant, grayed out world. “Along the butter-/Soft red leather seat” follows the body description and places that body more firmly into the stage of the poem. Here we get our first sense of color, red, but it is also combined with the idea of “butter-soft” which slightly washes out the tone, providing more grounding for this distant memory that has been conjured up. The red is still important though, especially when contrasted with the beige of the Deathmobile. I immediately thought of blood, due to the reference to “Death” in the first line. Red could also symbolize the passions or desires of the child in the back-seat. They could be lost or forgotten ones. Perhaps ones that were cut short by Death. The following lines provide a little more ideas of what this could mean. “What I want is to become/What I was/Before the accident.” I want to draw attention to the strange, seemingly erratic line breaks here. “What I want to become” is presented all as one line, but the following statement which would follow as a single line is broken into two. This provides emphasis on this point, focusing on the “was.” The speaker wants to be who he/she was in the past, which questions what happens in the future that leads the speaker to revert back to the past? That tipping point from future to past is the accident mentioned at the end of the group of lines. You could divide the speaker’s world into two segments; pre-accident and post-accident. Pre-accident is clearly a better time and something the speaker wishes to return to. I imagine the accident has to do with the car and definitely resulted in a fatality. Let’s continue on and see. The next view lines almost reach out of the screen and grab the reader to pull them into the world, into the scene taking place in the moment in that “beige Mercedes sedan.” “You think/I’m a rumor,” includes the reader by using the word “you,” and brings their opinion of preconceived notions into the poem by having the reader thinking about the events or speaker in the poem. The next line changes the subject back to the speaker and enlightens the reader to what they were “thinking.” The speaker feels as if they were just a rumor, a slight whisper in the wind, which seems odd to me because all of the previous imagery is so striking that there was, to me at least, no question to the reality of the speaker. However, this confirms the idea that the accident was fatal, that maybe the speaker is a sort of ghost, narrating and remembering that fateful day. That gives more context the speaker wishing they were back in the past, when they were alive. Hmmmmmm, as usual there are so many different things to contemplate. I wanted to explore this ghost idea further and luckily the following line allows just that. “I move from one world/To the next,” clearly presents an image of a non-human or perhaps even human as we imagine it. Confined to this world only. Clearly, this is not the case with this particular speaker. This reminds me of something else I found on Cruz’s own blog. She talks about inbetweens and writes, “And it is within these spaces, these small quiet places, that possibility exists.” That’s what Cruz exhibits here is the inbetween of life and death, this figure that is skirting two worlds, trying desperately to cling onto to the past one, the world they are no longer a part of. The rest of the poem is perhaps the most confusing or disturbing, so I hope to do it justice. Let’s break it down: “Living inside a mink/Lined winter,” I am immediately thinking of mink lined fur coats, a rich, luxurious accessory, which contrasts with Cruz’s usual style of poverty or desolation. Maybe this contrast, highlights the difference between the speaker now and the speaker then. In this ghost-like state the speaker is more opulent and has access to better things, yet they still long for the past. Finally, it is time for the final four lines, “God’s child-/Like voice/Singing quietly/Inside me.” An allusion to God cements the idea of this ghost like figure who is narrating the poem. The voice inside the speaker is God’s or at least is referenced as being God’s, yet when I imagine God’s voice, I imagine it as loud and booming. In this poem; however, it is described as childlike and sing-songy quiet, which is very reflective of the state of the speaker, who is five or at least was at the time of the accident. “Inside me” is the final line, the final image struck into the reader. This is referring to God’s voice, almost dictating the speaker in their life. To me, I feel like the speaker is then transformed into an angel-like figure, hovering between worlds and viewing the scenes as they unfold beneath her. Now I would like to return to this idea of “erstling” or “first-born.” I took the idea of its connection to the Bible due to the angel path we have been traveling on and we have the idea of Christ being the first-born of God and our Savior and possibly even be considered an angel. Applying this concept to this poem and you see the speaker as this Christ-like figure, a Savior, or at least aspiring to be so. But they are caught up in their past, they cannot move on. They cling to that memory of the Pre-Accident like a tattered-yellowed photograph. A snapshot that can never be recaptured again. That is why God’s voice is childlike and quiet, perhaps even timid. It is being repressed by the speaker, who is ensnared in a tangle of what can never be and they cannot move on. They bounce between worlds, trying to create that possibility, as Cruz presents in her blog, that their life can be returned to them. But alas, it is impossible. We can never go back, only forward. How many times do we feel this way? How many times are we stuck to this notion that we can change or even have the past back? This happens to me everyday. I am still enraged or even embarrassed by things that happened more than a decade ago. But why? Why are humans like this? Why do we refuse to move on, why do we bounce from one world to another like the speaker in this poem? Examine your life, figure out where you do this to yourself, because I guarantee that we do. We all have that moment, that tattered-yellow snapshot that we wrap ourselves around and refuse to relinquish. But we should stop that because it gets in the way of our personal growth. It prohibited this angelic speaker to become their full potential of a savior. They just kept hitting the rewind, contemplating the accident and what could have changed. Stop clinging to the past and put yourself full force into the future. The past is a closed book, but the future is a blank notebook, where you can write your own path. I want to bring back that idea of in betweens and possibilities as I close (finally). We are currently and constantly standing on the inbetween of the past and the future. The present is that fleeting, important in between. Cherish it and from that in between create a whole new world that reflects what you want it to be. Looking to the past will only stagnate your life. Move forward and never fall back.
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