Laura Kasischke Poems

The white bowls in the orderly
cupboards filled with nothing.

The sound
...

Like the human brain, which organizes
The swirls and shades of the bathroom tiles
Into faces, faces
...

I thought we were playing a game
in a forest that day.
I ran as my mother chased me.
...

The beautiful plate I cracked in half as I wrapped it in tissue paper—
as if the worship of a thing might be the thing that breaks it.

This river, which is life, which is wayfaring. This river,
which is also sky. This dipper, full of mind, which is
...

That dream of a cricket
in the dark of the night
at the foot
of the gallows tree.
...

Once there was a woman who laughed for years uncontrollably after a stroke.

Once there was a child who woke after surgery to find his parents were impostors.

These seagulls above the parking lot today, made of hurricane and ether, they
...

A tail, a torso, a tiny face.
A longing, a journey, a deep belief.
A spawning, a fissioning, a bit of tissue
anchored to a psyche,
...

Like silent naked monks huddled
around an old tree stump, having
spun themselves in the night
out of thought and nothingness—
...

Recall the carousel. Its round and round.
Its pink lights blinking off and on.
The children's faces painted garish colors against
an institutional wall. And the genetics. The
...

Small and panting mass
Of moonlight and dampness on a log
This glistening tumor, terrible frog
...