Ceive

By B.K. Fischer

A poetic retelling of Noah’s Ark set in the near future, Ceive is a novella in verse that recounts a post-apocalyptic journey aboard a container ship.

This contemporary flood narrative unfolds through poems following the perspective of a woman named Val, who is found in the wreckage of her flooding home by a former UPS delivery man. As environmental and political catastrophes force them to flee the Eastern Seaboard, Val and her rescuer take refuge alongside a group of pilgrims seeking refuge from the catastrophic collapse of a civilization destroyed by gun violence, climate crisis, and social unrest.

The ship of cargo and refugees is run by the captain Nolan and his wife Nadia, who set sail for Greenland, now warmed to a temperate climate. The couple place Val in charge of caring for a neurodivergent young boy who holds knowledge of analog navigation. Mourning her missing daughter, Val experiences both isolation and a wellspring of compassion in survival, an indefatigable need to connect. She and the other pilgrims weather illness and peril, boredom and conflict, deprivation and despair as they set sail across stormy, unfamiliar waters.

Drawing from the Anglo-Saxon poem The Seafarer, the Bible, and the Latin root word in receive, Ceive is a vision of eco-cataclysm and survival—inviting meditations on biodiversity, illness, social law, sustenance, scripture, menopause, sensory perception, human bonds, caregiving, and loss, all the while extending a call for renewal and hope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BOA Editions Ltd.
• Release date: Sep 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781950774449

B.K. Fischer

B.K. Fischer is the author of Ceive (BOA, 2021) and four previous books of poetry: Radioapocrypha (Mad Creek Books, 2018), which won the 2018 The Journal/Wheeler Prize; My Lover’s Discourse (Tinderbox, 2018); St. Rage’s Vault (The Word Works, 2013), which won the Washington Prize; and Mutiny Gallery (Truman State University Press, 2011), winner of the 2011 T.S. Eliot Prize. She is also the author of the critical study Museum Mediations: Reframing Ekphrasis in Contemporary American Poetry (Routledge, 2006). Her poems and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review, Kenyon Review, Boston Review, Jacket2, FIELD, WSQ, Ninth Letter, Blackbird, Los Angeles Review of Books, Modern Language Studies, and elsewhere. Fischer holds a BA from the Writing Seminars at The Johns Hopkins University, an MFA in poetry from Columbia University, and a PhD in English and American Literature from New York University. A former poetry editor of Boston Review, she teaches The Comma Sutra, a course on grammar and syntax for creative practice, in the School of the Arts at Columbia University. She lives in Sleepy Hollow, New York with her husband and three children.

Book preview

CEIVE

CEIVE

A NOVELLA-IN-VERSE BY

B.K. FISCHER

AMERICAN POETS CONTINUUM SERIES, NO. 188

BOA EDITIONS, LTD. ROCHESTER, NY 2021

Copyright © 2021 by B.K. Fischer

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition

21  22  23  24  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

For information about permission to reuse any material from this book, please contact The Permissions Company at www.permissionscompany.com or e-mail [e-mail].

Publications by BOA Editions, Ltd.—a not-for-profit corporation under section 501 (c) (3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code—are made possible with funds from a variety of sources, including public funds from the Literature Program of the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency; and the County of Monroe, NY. Private funding sources include the Max and Marian Farash Charitable Foundation; the Mary S. Mulligan Charitable Trust; the Rochester Area Community Foundation; the Ames-Amzalak Memorial Trust in memory of Henry Ames, Semon Amzalak, and Dan Amzalak; the LGBT Fund of Greater Rochester; and contributions from many individuals nationwide. See Colophon for special individual acknowledgments.

Cover Art: 6 Step by Elizabeth King Durand

Cover Design: Sandy Knight

Interior Design and Composition: Richard Foerster

BOA Logo: Mirko

BOA Editions books are available electronically through BookShare, an online distributor offering Large-Print, Braille, Multimedia Audio Book, and Dyslexic formats, as well as through e-readers that feature text to speech capabilities.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Fischer, B. K., author.

Title: Ceive : poems / by B.K. Fischer.

Description: First edition. | Rochester, NY : BOA Editions, Ltd., 2021. | Series: American poets continuum series ; no. 188 |

Identifiers: LCCN 2021009563 (print) | LCCN 2021009564 (ebook) | ISBN 9781950774432 (paperback) | ISBN 9781950774449 (ebook)

Subjects: LCGFT: Poetry.

Classification: LCC PS3606.I764 C45 2021 (print) | LCC PS3606.I764 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021009563

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021009564

BOA Editions, Ltd.

250 North Goodman Street, Suite 306

Rochester, NY 14607

www.boaeditions.org

A. Poulin, Jr., Founder (1938–1996)

for Ren

That a solitary person bears

witness to law in the ark to

an altar of snow and every

age or century for a day is

—Susan Howe, That This

There is a difference between after and after afraid.

—Gertrude Stein, More Grammar for a Sentence

CONTENTS

PERCEIVE

N 41° 5' / W 73° 52'

RECAP

N 41° 5' / W 73° 52'

RECAPTURE

N 41° 5' / W 73° 52'

RECAPITULATE

N 41° 5' / W 73° 52'

PRECONCEIVE

N 41° 4' / W 73° 52'

INCIPIENT

N 41° 3' / W 73° 53'

RECEIVE

RECEPTION

N 41° 3' / W 73° 53'

CAPACITY

ECONOMIES OF SCALE

N 40° 59' / W 73° 54'

EXCEPTIONAL

N 40° 51' / W 73° 57'

RECEPTIVE

N 40° 43' / W 74° 1'

RECEPTACLE

N 40° 38' / W 74° 3'

ANALOG

N 40° 35' / W 74° 2'

CONCEIVE

CONCEPT

N 40° 33' / W 73° 14'

EXCEPT

PERCEPTION

N 41° 2' / W 71° 50'

PERCEPTIVE

DAIRY QUEEN

N 41° 19' / W 69° 46'

SUSCEPTIBLE

N 42° 54' / W 67° 56'

APPERCEIVE

N 44° 35' / W 63° 31'

PERCEIVER

N 44° 38' / W 56° 11'

PRECONCEPTION

N 47° 9' / W 51° 29'

APPERCEPTION

N 49° 43' / W 53° 53'

NOCICEPTIVE

N 50° 46' / W 52° 57'

CATCH

N 51° 58' / W 49° 20'

CAPTION

MISCONCEPTION

N 52° 10' / W 51° 24'

PITCH IT WITHIN AND WITHOUT WITH PITCH

N 54° 2' / W 50° 21'

CATCH AS CATCH CAN

SIEVE

N 56° 58' / W 46° 34'

FORCEPS

N 57° 28' / W 48° 1'

CONCEPTION

N 60° 12' / W 51° 3'

ACCEPT

N 62° 16' / W 54° 49'

DECEIVE

N 64° 6' / W 56° 49'

INTERCEIVE

INTERCEPT

N 65° 23' / W 56° 52

IMPERCEPTIBLE

N 67° 18' / W 25'

BUT SHALL HAVE HIS SORROW FOR SEA-FARE

N 68° 42' / W 60° 40'

MISCONCEIVE

N 71° 13' / W 63° 6'

RECEIPT

N 73° 44' / W 65° 30'

MISPERCEIVE

N 75° 56' / W 70° 50'

TRANSCEIVER

N 77° 8' / W 71° 55'

CEIVE

CEPT

NOTES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

COLOPHON

PERCEIVE

Val, you are a fool.

You hear a knock,

a thud, and sit up—

that’s no neighbor,

no one is here, no one

is left—you are talking

to yourself, talking

to the inside of your

skull, talking to your

hands—listen, drift

back to sleep, back

to the dream there is

a vent in your chest,

six louvered blades

across your sternum.

A hand reaches in

but gets caught, cut

as it tries to pull back.

N 41° 5' / W 73° 52'

Gather your wits, girlie. You sit up on a pile of towels by the defunct sump pump—dead quiet, no hum. The basement