Laura Kasischke

“Home"It would take forever to get therebut I would know it anywhere:My white horse grazing in my blossomy field.Its soft nostrils. The petalsfalling from the trees into the stream.The festival would be about to beginin the dusky village in the distance. The doefrozen at the edge of the grove:She leaps. She vanishes. My face—She has taken it. And my name—(Although the plaintive lark in the tallgrass continues to say and to say it.)Yes. This is the place.Where my shining treasure has been waiting.Where my shadow washes itself in my fountain.A few graves among the roses. Some mosson those. An ancientbell in a steeple down the roadmaking no sound at allas the monk pulls and pulls on the rope.”

“We can talk to one another on telephones in banks, in cars, in line. No more sitting on the floor attached to a cord while everybody listens. No more standing outside the booth in the cold, fingering an adulterous dime. Wesend each other mail without stamps. Watch television without antennas. Wear seatbelts, smoke less, and never on a bus, never in the lobby while we’re waiting for the lawyer to call on us.Nowhere now, a typewriter ribbon. Quaintly the record album’s scratch and spin. Our groceries, scanned. Pump our own gas. Take off our shoes before boarding our plane. Those towers: Gone. And Pluto’s no longer a planet: Forget it. I could go onand on, but you’re still dead and nothing’s any different.”

“ifyou sing a sad song loud enough, the boyson those torpedo boatscan hear you under the sea.”

“--Your headache--I am trying to imagine itYour head is in your handsThe nurse is pouring pills onto a plateNovember againToo lateYour headacheIt is a birdWounded, in leavesIts sweet bird’s nest is full of pain in a distant placeNovemberThere are daisiesIn the ruined garden, still blooming strangelyAnd in a manic yellow hat, the old ladyAnd the old man, dead in his bedAnd their daughter, the saint:Her dark, religious hair gets tangled in the branchesShe is screaming, grabbingWhile the nurses play Mozart in another roomWhile the bats fly over the roofSnatch the black notes from the blacknessLaughingYou cryI am going to dieI can see them through this windowTheir little black capesThe touching ugliness of their little faces”

“We must imagine our lives well. We must engage our conscience. Conscience is the voice of God in the nature and heart of man.”

“your life can change in an instant. that instant can last forever.”

“Mr. McCleod: And if there’s anything I want you guys to take with you from this class, as you’re abusing your bodies over break, is three things: the heart is the body’s strongest muscle, that the brain has more cells in it than our galaxy has stars, and that the body is 72% water. So wherever you go over vacation, don’t get too dehydrated.”

“Heartbreak could be lived with if it weren't accompanied by regret.”

“The first shot causes warm rain to fall on Diana's arms from the sky. The second plants a mirrored jewel in the left temporal lobe of her brain…a place she could have named on a quiz but which now seems to be the place where the future is imagined, the place where what would have been is.”

“No one is going to hear what she says whether she speaks or not. Simply she could close her eyes and never speak again. She could suck all of the air in this room-every dust mote, every atom-into her body and hide it inside her…”

“Behind him there's still the mirror…a bit of infinity, which in its disinterest still holds their reflections safely in it.”

“The blond stuffs her hairbrush, which is now spun with gold and black silk (a miniature angel's nest) back into her backpack next to her anthology of English literature. The pages are so thin, they're like dead girls' dreams, translucent skin. On them it seems that everything that has ever been thought has been written.”

“Writing is really just a matter of writing a lot, writing consistently and having faith that you'll continue to get better and better. Sometimes, people think that if they don't display great talent and have some success right away, they won't succeed. But writing is about struggling through and learning and finding out what it is about writing itself that you really love.”

“The first time I had sex with a man for money, it was September.”