Fire & Flower

Laura Kasischke

• Publisher: Alice James Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781948579759
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

The poems in Fire & Flower are about the images that hold the world together in the mind of a child, a woman, and the mother she becomes. The metaphors used to describe their lives are mysterious and frightening, and they accumulate in this collection as a full expression of the awe that makes us all live.

Two

Barney

I love you. You love me.

He is the true Zero in his cap & bells, in the terrible

lizard of his skin. I see him

crossing the tundra in snowshoes like a big

hug coming, lost

on Earth

in a body. Consider: if I become him

what kind of suffering? This

afflicted creature, dancing

for the hostile, costumed. Venus

loves him. He loves me, has given

himself to the whole world without

mortification, given

himself to the landscape

of sap and snow and cloud, come

unto the world

and made it pregnant, singing

to the invisible family before him, swallowing

the sorrow of children—innocent, curious, extinct.

A narrow stream of tears runs right through him.

When the beloved

is in everyone, in the excited

imbecile, the timid

orgy of sleep, who

can help but think of Christ

with his sandals & lambs? Why

all of us? Why not just some? Oh

the emptiness of so much. The everlastingness. This

hug. Quivering, endured. A purple

balloon like our hearts, naked

and blown up

without flesh, wrinkles, fur. It loves

without an object of it, and how

we long to keep

the beast of it

stuffed down inside us

along with the little saints & fools

who sing pitiful songs in our chests.

Pregnant at the All-night Supermarket

Ozone spills over the frozen rolls, the whole

breathing surface of the earth, the whole

unnatural world. Outside, rusty water

yawns up from a well, while

the moon deeply sleeps in her

damp chemise of cheese, while

nurses at the hospital nearby

hover over babies

wearing white. So

much fresh and living flesh

out there—the fish-egg stars, Christ’s

mildewed shroud—but here

not even the dim

memory of mold. Here

my hand passes over

what I once wanted to buy—all

those cold loaves and indifferent lies—and I

begin to believe there’s nothing left

in this world

I could bear to eat

until, leaving, I see

a Luna Moth on my windshield.

Its wings are pale green.

Dear Air

I saw you in the laundromat—my love, my voice, my empty dove.

I saw you in the closet in

the emptiness of shoes. I saw you in the window and saw myself in you. My

honeycomb, my fate, brief

virgin I once was. All

summer, white grapes

spun themselves from sun

and water on their vines—in-

candescent thumbs, clear-

blooded and alive. Love

made love to me the way

a spider shrouds a fly

in silk and lies until

he’s amorous

and quiet

as a meal. And now I know that love like that is nothing, but

bottomless as

the space contained

by the gold hoop of a wedding ring lost

one day in linens. Five

thousand brides could dance

at one time

on that bright dime. Christ’s

white tigers flying

through hoops of fire. You

did not see me, but I saw you. Thief: Womb: Vowel

wrapped in light like

an old woman’s

faded hair.

As in heaven, I saw you there, and all I could do was stare

dumbly as you tumbled

your stars & flowers with my towels.

Burial

Where my father has retired, there’s so much sand

he can only grow

a small, crooked

carrot in the ground. It tastes

like a finger, or it tastes like the sound

a song makes passing

through a rabbit hole. My father has stepped

off the porch

of his ...