Two poems by LAURA KASISCHKE
A Dog, About to Pounce, Looks Back
This impulse to go, to stay, to rush
after it, and to turn away. This
life like the table
set for celebration
on a glacier melting a little more every day.
And candles to be lit on a cake, and
someone who has never been happier beside
someone who cannot bear
to look into the happy one’s face.
And a park full of boys on skateboards
and old men on benches today.
And one mother parting the candles’ flames
with her bare hands to search
for a child behind the science
and the saving. Look
at this mess! Surgical gowns and silver
instruments littering the floor of this place.
Your child’s hand has turned into a mirror.
Your child holds a hand up to your face.
48 The Paris-American
This impulse to go, to stay, to rush
after it, and to turn away. This
life like the table
set for celebration
on a glacier melting a little more every day.
And candles to be lit on a cake, and
someone who has never been happier beside
someone who cannot bear
to look into the happy one’s face.
And a park full of boys on skateboards
and old men on benches today.
And one mother parting the candles’ flames
with her bare hands to search
for a child behind the science
and the saving. Look
at this mess! Surgical gowns and silver
instruments littering the floor of this place.
Your child’s hand has turned into a mirror.
Your child holds a hand up to your face.
48 The Paris-American
K–
Who lay unmoving
in his hospital bed
still running through a dream. And
the doctors whispered something
to the parents. Just
words. But irreversible. Like
the spell cast so long ago on the trees.
49 The Paris-American
Who lay unmoving
in his hospital bed
still running through a dream. And
the doctors whispered something
to the parents. Just
words. But irreversible. Like
the spell cast so long ago on the trees.
49 The Paris-American
Laura Kasischke received the National Book Critics Circle Award for her most recent collection of poems, SPACE, IN CHAINS. She has also published eight novels. She lives in Chelsea, Michigan, and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Michigan.