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    Lilies Without
    Lilies Without
    Lilies Without
    Ebook98 pages30 minutes

    Lilies Without

    By Laura Kasischke

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    About this ebook

    High profile poet whose last book, Gardening in the Dark (Ausable 2004) was chosen by Time Magazine as "One of 7 Poetry Books to Curl Up With." It also received a rave review in the NY Times and was a NY Times Editor's Choice pick. Kasischke was interviewed on New Letters on the Air, a nationally syndicated public radio literary program in February 2006. Kansas City Star interviewed Kasischke on January 2006. Published in Best American Poetry 2006.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAusable Press
    Release dateDec 25, 2012
    ISBN9781619320727
    Lilies Without
    Author

    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.

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      Book preview

      Lilies Without - Laura Kasischke

      I.

      NEW DRESS

      Dress of dreams and portents, worn

      in memory, despite

      the posted warnings

      sunk deeply into the damp

      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.

      I AM THE COWARD WHO DID NOT

      PICK UP THE PHONE

      I am the coward who did not pick up the phone, so as never to know. So many clocks and yardsticks dumped into an ocean.

      I am the ox which drew the cart full of urgent messages straight into the river, emerging none the wiser on the opposite side, never looking back at all those floating envelopes and postcards, the wet ashes of some loved one’s screams. How was I to know?

      I am the warrior who killed the sparrow with a cannon. I am the guardian who led the child by the hand into the cloud, and emerged holding only an empty glove. O—

      the digital ringing of it. The string of a kite of it, which I let go of. O, the commotion in the attic of it. In the front yard, in the back yard, in the driveway—all of which I heard nothing of, because I am the one who closed the windows and said, This has nothing to do with us.

      In fact, I am the one singing this so loudly I cannot hear you even now. (Mama, what’s happening outside? Honey, is that the phone?)

      I am the one who sings:

      The bones and shells of us.

      The organic broth of us.

      The Zen gong of us.

      Oblivious, oblivious, oblivious.

      MISS CONGENIALITY

      There’s a name given

      after your death

      and a name you must answer to while you’re alive.

      Like flowers, my friends—nodding, nodding. My

      enemies, like space, drifting

      away. They

      praised my face, my

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