Fire & Flower

By Laura Kasischke

The poems in Fire & Flower are about the images that hold the world together in the mind of a child, a woman, and the mother she becomes. The metaphors used to describe their lives are mysterious and frightening, and they accumulate in this collection as a full expression of the awe that makes us all live.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alice James Books
• Release date: Oct 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781948579759

Laura Kasischke

Laura Kasischke teaches in the MFA program at the University of Michigan. A winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry, she has published eight collections of poetry and ten novels, three of which have been made into films, including The Life Before Her Eyes.

Book preview

One

Fire & Flower

Nights, he’d climb

the fire escape to me. The sky

was rocket-fire. Rain was my fire crying. Now

I sleep beside a child. Song of a million years. Song

of milk & mouths turned to white blossoms

in walled gardens.

Sleep, like a swan boat drifting

down a bowery stream. Long

feathers on the water in our bed’s unfolding flower.

Hostess

One of the guests arrives with irises, all

funnel & hood, papery tongues whispering little

rumors in their mouths, and leaves

his white shoes in the doorway

where the others stumble

on the emptiness when they come. He

smiles. He says, "I’m

here to ruin your party, Laura," and he does. The stems

of the irises are too

long and stiff for a vase, and when

I cannot find the scissors, I slice

them off with a knife

while the party waits. Of course, the jokes

are pornographic, and the flowers

tongued and stunted

and seductive, while

in the distance weeds & lightning

make wired anxiety of the night. But I’m

a hostess, a woman who must give

the blessing of forced content, carry

a cage of nervous birds

like conversation through my living room, turning

up the music, dimming

the lights, offering more, or less, or something else

as it seems fit, using

only the intuition

of a lover’s tongue, a confessional poet, or

a blind woman fluffing up her hair. It is

an effort, making pleasure, passing

it around on a silver platter, and I’m

distracted all night

by his pale