Look by Laura Kasischke
most of the billions of worlds beyond ours are simply desolate oceanless forfeits in space
Look
Look! I bear into this room a platter piled high with the rage my mother felt toward my father! Yes, it's diamonds now. It's pearls, public humiliation, an angry dime-store clerk, a man passed out at the train station, a girl at the bookstore determined to read every fucking magazine on this shelf for free. They tell us that most of the billions of worlds beyond ours are simply desolate oceanless forfeits in space. But logic tells us there must be operas, there have to be car accidents cloaked in that fog. Down here, God just spit on a rock, and it became a geologist. God punched a hole in the drywall on earth and pulled out of that darkness another god. She — just kept her thoughts to herself. She just — followed him around the house, and every time he turned a light on, she turned it off.
1
Source: Poetry Foundation from Poetry (October 2006)
 |
|
Wow, I love the work of Laura Kasischke! and here she is being fabulous again throwing her gut punches.
Operas and accidents. Perfect. What a delicare deluge! What a deft onslaught! Whoever Laura Kastischke is, I shall now try to find more of her. She has a breathlesness, an unstoppability I love. The last line is perfection.