Space, in Chains Quotes

“July, that lovely hell, all
velvet dresses and drapes
stuffed into a hot little hole.”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“Home"

It would take forever to get there
but I would know it anywhere:

My white horse grazing in my blossomy field.
Its soft nostrils. The petals
falling from the trees into the stream.

The festival would be about to begin
in the dusky village in the distance. The doe
frozen 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 tall
grass 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 moss
on those. An ancient

bell in a steeple down the road
making no sound at all
as the monk pulls and pulls on the rope.”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“When I built my luminous prison around you, you simply lay down at the center of it and died.”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“Bright splash of blood on the kitchen
floor. Astonishing
red. (All
that brightness inside me?)”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“And

this letter
I didn't send
how surprising

to find it now.

All this love I must have felt.”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“And I still walk the sidewalk mumbling

something about how it will all be fine

Fine is its own crazy village on the Rhine
Fine is the name of the cuckoo-clock maker
Fine is the word the cuckoo cries

every hour after hour on the hour—
scrambling out of its dark little hole

like something being chased with a knife by Time”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“The letters, the fading. The labyrinth, the cake. The four hundred brackish lakes of the brain. She searches for the
music, but she can't find it. Oh, God, it was here
only the other day.”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“The aunts gathered around the fiery cake chanting, Make a wish! Make a wish!”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“And all the embezzled
cents and dollars
of the last time I saw you.”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“The heart hacked out of the center of an overgrown hedge with an ax
To live beyond the brain”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“--Your headache--


I am trying to imagine it
Your head is in your hands
The nurse is pouring pills onto a plate
November again
Too late

Your headache
It is a bird
Wounded, in leaves

Its sweet bird’s nest is full of pain in a distant place

November
There are daisies
In the ruined garden, still blooming strangely

And in a manic yellow hat, the old lady

And the old man, dead in his bed

And their daughter, the saint:

Her dark, religious hair gets tangled in the branches
She is screaming, grabbing

While the nurses play Mozart in another room
While the bats fly over the roof
Snatch the black notes from the blackness
Laughing

You cry
I am going to die

I can see them through this window

Their little black capes

The touching ugliness of their little faces”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“I am
the impossibility of desiring
the person you pity.
And the petal of the Easter lily—”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“Fragrant, dreaming, unreal, and having to do, terribly, with love.”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“That to want to succeed is to fail”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“as if we

were actual human beings
or completely normal people”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“So we found ourselves in an ancient place, the very
air around us bound by chains.”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“And my wildly troubled love for you, which labored gently in the garden all through June, then tore the flowers up with its fists in July.”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“She is ancientness. She has lived forever. It has driven her insane.”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“Not the bureaucrat's stamp on the folder of our fate. But a knot nonetheless, and not of our making.”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“They told us it was a dance, a party, a pageant, so we ran laughing together straight into the disaster.”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“My memory of your casual smile

This memory, like
a child's bit of sweet embroidery smuggled
out of an asylum”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“The self on tiptoes sneaking away from the self.”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“My eyes closed, hands open, Take it, take it. Then, every day wasted chasing it.”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“We would never be together in this life again.”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“A man in the massive shadows
of the columns

of the Museum of Griefs-to-Come.”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“That a star in heaven
might have poisonous feathers.
That an angel might cast it for
us into the sea.

[…]

That it might have been foolish to fall in love with this world.
That God sent Word.”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“Even my identity has been kept hidden from me. It is a child's ghost buried in mud. It is an old woman waving at me from a passing train.”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“A man holding a woman made of bad moods in his arms.”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“And this

last second or two of dreaming
in which your face
returns to me completely. Not
even needing to be, being

so alive again to me.”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“Why not the Victorians and their sentimental grief-wreaths woven from a loved one's hair?”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains