I’m alway so grateful for poetry recommendations–and one of the best I got last year was to read Laura Kasischke (thanks, Anthony!). I’m still digesting her newest poetry collection, Infinitesimals, which is threaded with grief and perfectly haunting images.
“Room”
There’s a room inside myself
I’ve never seen.
There’s
a bed there, and
on a nightstand, photographs
in frames. But
whose faces?
A violet
vase on a vanity: I’ve
held it in my hands. Tearful
apology. And
under my bed
in narrow boxes?
And if I open the desk
drawer, or
the dresser?
Well, just
the usual soft
folded things.
Silky
rectangles.
Knitted
squares.
A glove.
A stocking.
A loss, eternally.
And a window
(I’m sure of this)
that looks
out onto the green.
An apple tree.
And, beneath the tree, my
grandmother
in a housedress
in a lounge chair, sipping
a cool drink, not
even wondering
where she went or
where,
all these years,
she’s been.
live in the layers 