More and tinier

Abstract

More and Tinier Laura Kasischke (bio) A long green thread unraveled from a dress, picked up by the wind, caught in the branch of a tree: Not even my aging body belongs to me. My heart made of strangeness and cells. The sleeping salamander of my spleen. That miraculous, ancient needle threading a dress through a tree. It is one kind of difficulty to be the thread. Another to be the needle. Hardest of all, the tree. Every day, I become more and tinier. Eat less. Think before I speak. On Sunday, after sex, I remember the boats speeding across the water, propelled wildly by the lightest breeze, their sails swollen with it, still blowing on a summer Sunday through my memory. Oh, those boats, this is what they mean. Laura Kasischke Laura Kasischke has published six collections of poetry (most recently Gardening in the Dark, Ausable Press, 2004) and four novels (most recently Be Mine, Harcourt, 2007). Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, The New Republic, Ploughshares, the Iowa Review and elsewhere. She teaches at the University of Michigan and lives in Chelsea, Michigan. Copyright © 2007 The Curators of the University of Missouri