Laura Kasischke is the author of seven books of poetry, including Lilies Without (Ausable Press, 2007), Gardening in the Dark (Ausable, 2004), Dance and Disappear (Juniper Prize, 2002), and four novels. Her work has received many honors, including the Alice Fay diCastagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Beatrice Hawley Award, the Pushcart Prize, and the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award for Emerging Writers. She teaches at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
New Dress
Dress of dreams and portents, worn
in memory, despite
the posted warnings
sand
all along the shore. (The green
tragedy of the sea
about to happen to me.) Even
in my subconscious, I ignored them.
(The green
eternity of the sea, just around the corner.) That
whole ominous summer, I wore it, just
an intimation
then, a bit
of threatening ephemera. Another
rumor. Another
vicious whisper. And then
they sang. (The giddy
green
girls
of the sea.)
The feminine
maelstrom
of it, I wore. (How
quiet, at the edge of it, the riot. How
tiny, the police.) The Sturm
und Drang of it. The crypt
and mystery. The knife
in fog of it. The haunted
city of my enemy.
(And always
the green, floating, open
book of the sea.) That
dress, like
an era of deafness and imminent error, ending
even as I wore it, even as I dragged the damp
hem of it
everywhere
I wore it.
Miss Weariness
At first she looked like all the other girls, but then
the chipped fingernail, and then
she sat down in a folding chair
and let the other girls pass by
in their ballgowns, in their bathing suits, in their
beatific smiles, but she
had tossed her heels aside.
Enough of industry, enough
of goals and troubles, looking ahead, grooming, and dreaming
and anything that ended
in i-n-g in this
life ever again, she said.
O, enough, even, of the simple stuff:
The will-'o-the-wisp, the rain on a lake, all
those goldfish in their plastic
baggies at the fair. To them
it must have been
as if the world were divided
into small warped dreams, nowhere
to get to, and nothing to do but swim.