Poem
Laura Kasischke
Game
Game
Game
I thought we were playing a gamein a forest that day.
I ran as my mother chased me.
But she’d been stung by a bee.
Or bitten by a snake.
She shouted my name, which
even as a child I knew was not
“Stop. Please. I’m dying.”
I ran deeper
into the bright black trees
happily
as she chased me: How
lovely the little bits and pieces.
The fingernails, the teeth. Even
the bombed cathedrals
being built inside of me.
How sweet
the eye socket. The spine. The
curious, distant possibility that God
had given courage
to human beings
that we might
suffer a little longer.
And by the time
I was willing to admit that
all along
all along
I’d known it was no game
I was a grown woman, turning
back, too late.
© 2012, Laura Kasischke
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Poems of Laura Kasischke
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Game
I thought we were playing a gamein a forest that day.
I ran as my mother chased me.
But she’d been stung by a bee.
Or bitten by a snake.
She shouted my name, which
even as a child I knew was not
“Stop. Please. I’m dying.”
I ran deeper
into the bright black trees
happily
as she chased me: How
lovely the little bits and pieces.
The fingernails, the teeth. Even
the bombed cathedrals
being built inside of me.
How sweet
the eye socket. The spine. The
curious, distant possibility that God
had given courage
to human beings
that we might
suffer a little longer.
And by the time
I was willing to admit that
all along
all along
I’d known it was no game
I was a grown woman, turning
back, too late.
Game
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