Torture by Laura Kasischke From the Latin, torque: to twist. The infliction of it, as well as the experience of its infliction. Rumors, thunder rumbling, some wild applause in a small auditorium after a child’s terrible performance. Or the detonation of a bomb. The hiss of a missile. “The ground shook, but we didn’t feel it.” No one was killed. No matter what they did. No one survived no matter where they ran or hid.
★ Read our interview with Laura Kasischke on Whittling Away at Dream Logic ★
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Kasischke’s Torture stayed with me especially the way it moves from the ordinary to the irreversible without warning. This is not a response in disagreement, but in continuation looking at what happens before the breaking has a name.
From the Arabic, sabr: to hold.
Not patience
the older thing.
First the auditorium.
Not the bomb.
Not the hiss.
The smaller torture:
someone holds your work
beside another’s
and calls that
seeing you.
You clap.
The ground shook.
You were told
you didn’t feel it.
So you didn’t.
Until you couldn’t recall
what feeling
was yours.
Sabr doesn’t mean
you didn’t lose it.
It means you stayed.
No one survived.
You know this.
The shape they bent
was never
the shape you were.
This is my favorite of hers this week :) I so love the ending with its irony and end rhymes. The light tone makes me feel the underlying darkness all the more.