Author: Kirsten Kaschock

If only the world could
be kept – undismantled by
misunderstood hands
difficulties of teeth

America is in wanton
retrograde, but I refuse to
go dark. They want that.

grief is a giraffe who
glides among the grove in a gangly
and gentle gloom, gnawing
leaves, stripping uppermost
green with its greedy lips
its black tongue

through the gaping all
good goes, longing
clinging to
margins in sluggish ghost
everything weighs, nothing aggregates

agony is a gift            the galaxy is

divulged in that
gap—gutted
glistened

 

no fight right no fight at all.
flagging. falling further from
any feeling. all of them. if
I fracture, is it fatal? if I freeze–
fetal? all these figments. these
finepoints, fragments, fists
of memory. I had fight once.
I had fervor, fury, the force
of my faith. I had belief, held
it firm. I felt I could fix things.
that my findings were full
and fair. friends were fast,
life would follow. all fine, all
fully formed, nothing forked
nothing freakish. this was
false. foolish. I failed to fear
default. fire fading, fields
fallowing. I should have
feared the fog. the flattening
of all affect. fecklessness is
our profoundest failing. not
fame, not filth, not ferocity–
indifference. fucking drift.

blast it all. blast bruisers
and bullies. blast blighters.
before the bend in the road
blueskies were boring, but
I beg for blue now. I’d barter
my boy to be able to breathe.
my firstborn. it’s a baffling
badness. not mine–but I’ve be-
held the abandoned, all bicker
and bite. Botched babies who
burble in bassinets, bright
bulbs of blank, brimming with
barbarism. It’s rank. Who will
bring up these brawlers? Before
they grow bigger than a bread-
box, they’re brutal.
                                        Birds ebbed
first, then butterflies. Bacteria
bloomed, buckets of bitter, 
barrels of bile. I’m beyond
believing in better. Beauty
is broken. The boys–
bellwethers, beasts. 

Devotion I should dig. I do. But how I
dread dreaming, departing as it does
from the dregs of the day. I digress. Or
I demur (directing myself to wall). Door-
ways are dreamy, no? Docents. I have
developed a disposition. Drawn to
drawings of dancers, the dangers of
darkness, I decide dharma is not duty.
Data does not drive me. Dynamite does.
I divine what is divine without deriving
design. I am a doubter who has willed
herself to dare. Delve. I dig. Ditches and
wells. I do this all day. I do this well. Each
depthcharge delightful as a doe dappled
by dew. A damp doe at dawn, dotted and
doting, before her daughter darts suddenly
away as doe is done–as doe dies and is
dragged into the middle distance. This
God does. Beyond all adoration there is
dismay, the undoing of May. The dis-
possessed despise what a god deigns
to destroy yet still demands amidst
debris: a tendering. I dig and dig and
never discover my demons, only pan-
demonium. Dented bowls, buried dolls
and dormant beetles–droll and devious
–ready to devour what is dearest, to de-
compose this diorama, to end the un
endurable, disperse dust. We drudges
we drones we diggers–it is not doom
we idolize. Doom, we decipher.

I hate the word cunt. I hate
capitalism, cornucopia, crudité.
I hate Colonels Sanders and Mustard.
I hate creatives. Cock. Community
standards, collateral damage,
covert operations: I hate them
all. & Columbine. Caskets I hate.
Clubbiness, cowards, chemtrails.
Conspiracists, counterfeits, corn-
dogs, corporate greed. I hate coming
home or to Jesus. I hate catcalls,
callsigns, category fives & catch-22.
Core beliefs confuse me. Cupidity
& cocaine fill me with contempt as
certainly as Captain Crunch. It is
conceivable, of course, that I am
incapable of coping with cruel
circumstance–that what I claim
to hate is, chiefly, unconsidered
corporeality. The carnage of merely
being. But if correct, I cannot see it.

the books line up. the books like to
link. the books make a book necklace,
a book choker. the books don’t mean

to strangle. but there is a certain slant
to their giving. it asks. the books do not
not demand. the strange thing is when

the books strongly suggest I attend to
what they’re laying down, I tend to turn
off, away. in this way, the books are like

the men I’ve never liked, the ones who–
like the books–seem always waiting
for me to learn enough to love them.

I learn to leave the books alone. others
(looked for, found) like loving me without
the strangling. put down your porn.

I refuse to dance the acceptance dance–
perform the thing I loathe–the therapy-speak
for a grief difficult to name, but one that, at its peak
might be called a homelessness of sorts. I had a place–
I’ve had places–but none stick. My defiance
is not-to pause to mourn. Each new house I race
to mark as mine tho I know all to be impermanent.
But so is life I mouth, pretending to some
unearned arc of enlightenment. There is a rhythm
to these losses which are never about a door
a roof, a yard. The lives I wasn’t meant
to lead I trash, soullessly sweeping, polishing floors
to shine for each next tenant. But who will dwell
in deserted Kirstens? I leave–unloved–her, hovel.

This has happened
before. Kronos
ate his children–why
shouldn’t we?

A woman can discover that she will die. A man can discover this also, about himself or about a woman. Either way, a man faces mortality which is like or, at least, not unlike the monolith in 2001 A Space Odyssey.

Rectangular prism.

A prison you are not inside.

Flame is such a prison to a moth. Money is a skyscraper in which no one lives. These jagged plinths. These swaying sideways strike-thrus.

A woman, discovering that she will die, may consult reference books. She may look up the word “discovery” in the OED. She may find that this Latin word replaced an Old English feminine noun: onfundennes.

A woman may note that this earlier word also carried a sense of experimentation. This feminine noun involved trial, effort, error. It was a word less about lifting the lid from the soup. Less about removing the dress to expose the bruising. The tumors.

The fragile veins drifting too close to the skin.

On an old woman’s hands, veins bubble up through the backs of the hands. Tendons.

We will all be musicians then. Life, a cello.

A woman with veins and skin is sometimes a mother. Not always and lately less likely, but still possibly. A mother may discover certain things about herself.

Rage is a thing with feathers and feathers are illegal. But are there feather police? This is the only question that must be dealt with. All milliners entered a doomed profession. It is a thick door, death.

Sometimes a crow uses the shiny to barter with the enemy. And because boredom is, death is not the enemy.

A woman who has developed her intellect has done it to combat boredom and the desire to wear hats.

Thinking is a shiny thing.

She does not conceive of it as combat. Boredom is a way to drown, thinking swims. When a mother thinks of her mortality, she does not imagine not being. She imagines what type of presence her absence will have for her children.

Women, even mothers, are not monoliths, but poets must speak in categories so that they are become like Jesus.

Undoubtedly, this is sad. I agree.

Speaking of men, of women, of milliners, poets, and crows. It is all very sad, but this is the way to onfundennes. One says ten thousand untrue things, and one of them becomes a child.

Featherless.

There was a child just waiting
to be taken, so I took him.
I called him many, many names
trying to arrive at the one.

In the end he drifted
between several and in and
out of this world always
a cygnet among drakelings.

I want to tell him where
he came from but I have for-
gotten the exact latitude
of the willow he leaned against

as if he had a cigarette to
offer, a rolled clove sweet
as the sisters he would never
have being fey and thus

sister enough for himself.
His brothers have never fully
processed his wild typography
though they love him like

courier–this messenger from
dark thicket, this abandoned
deer left to starve among thorns
before he wandered out

to live. I know a mother should
not worry about origin or tragic
outcome, able to give all to what’s
fond–any shiny, shiny thing.

But I am no mother, not to any
of these animals I’ve kept close
and let change near me. Maybe
a collector of sorts: a watcher

in the woods, a poet standing
stick-like in the field arms out-
stretched in futile star, the crow
who pays that ache no mind.

each inch out of the frigid dark is met by volte-face.
the coming frost will down plum tulip, white magnolia
a cool rebuke to flowers: you think you’re holy cuz
you dress like the pope? or it may be that this sneery hate
is aimed at me, gardening, or the waking bees. a cold sass
repulsing hope’s ass-waggling dance–spring is dead not late.

the little penis thing went inside
because it was scared, and when it wasn’t
it left a mess. even its antennae
were little penis things, four fleshy
little nubs fully retractable when scared.
eye stalks and smell stalks acting
like human gonads in cold
weather. here’s a difference
though. these penile hermaphrodites
are not so scared. how do I know?
because I learned a little about
them like they do sex
slow. like hours slow. like
finding every g-spot like frilly
footsie forever and ever
like until we both do part but
maybe we simply won’t slow.
so not the same.

a waterfall married TV static circa 1979 circa 3am
for years they discussed privacy and downtime and the role
of tourism in island economies      they were content 
content to be without      they consciously abstained
from children fearing the future and its crowded
vibe     also electrocution      not as an actual threat
more theoretical construct     when waterfall got sick
TV static was there until suddenly heading off the air
with the flag and wordless anthem and the antswarm
waterfall had cherished like a face      in static’s place were
many things      many many things      none of them good
waterfall got sicker alone      TV static showed up now
and again to indicate something broken in the world
but didn’t stay and couldn’t help waterfall at all      a dam
upriver had turned her into trickle      the thing neither had
understood was how fucking beautiful they could’ve been
combined      their offspring a motorcycle      not a slick new
rocket but a chopper with tallboy handlebars      the kind of
child that takes apart       and remakes themself on the open
road      seeking a path to living out from under     a night
where every channel is playing King Kong in black&white

Hegseth quotes pulp fiction. People will die. My father’s dementia
reminds me that the maples in the yard have started. Last year’s front
door opened to a young oak. I seem to have left one place for any other.
When I try to exist in public, I bifurcate. I don’t like leaning on astrology
or tarot or poetry, but I’ll wear them like a blue mohawk. I’m so not a real
punk but I used to carry them to keep the blooms of gnats at bay. this was
Junes, back before the township started spraying poison beside the crick
in that kinder timeline. I stopped worrying about children. The future.
I had to. First Sandy Hook, then 45 and Covid. Somalia and Gaza, Nepal
and wildfire. If a fool has bombs and wants to use them, who am I to
think myself shepherd? doctor? chronicler? An acorn sends out roots
to sprout through asphalt: a l’il punk tree. Oops, sorry. That’s AI.