November 30, 2008




kirsten kaschock




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MOTET


In artistry and largess, rearrange them.
In anger, they are to be arranged, re-
arranged, then done again. They are angels—
rearrange them. They are disastrous. They will
resist. Yet, do not cease. Glacial
in their garments, regal in glades and groves,

in dense grasses—distressful—
as they, in-inebriate, sling back sober growlers
of lager, or indifferently wrangle geraniums
into itty pots, better at to tend
and to protect than obstetric nurses
are, or prostitutes heeled precariously above

loved window boxes—rearrange them.
Their glands and ovaries. Make their knotless
hearts bear the pendulous weight of
bowels. Make them start
to resemble humanity. Deform them
with anatomy. Given the difficulty of insides,

they would not be so aether. Flawlessness
is mere, a porcelain mug in which such
unbearabilities steep: terrible
symmetry and so forth. It is time
they were not right. It is time they were
treated to the vast interior they lack.

Next to the sofa—sit the wingback, float
the ottoman in front of puddled drapes.
Curl up inside an angel: be
the fetus. In this way, they
could be made to matter. Off heads
of pins, not new age schtick, no longer

beads on philosophical abaci, nor tendrils
withering in the schizophrenic mind
—but bodied. So they may truly be
ours and us theirs, we'd say. All the while
we'd know—bothered not—the translation
into mother to be exaltation. Murder also.



*

Kirsten Kaschock is the author of _Unfathoms_ (Slope Editions 2004) and _a beautiful name/for a girl_ (upcoming from Ahsahta Press). She is a PhD student in dance at Temple University in Philadelphia where she lives with her three sons and their father.

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