Poetry Magazine
Hospital parking lot, April
Once there was a woman who laughed for years uncontrollably after a stroke.
Once there was a child who woke after surgery to find his parents were impostors.
These seagulls above the parking lot today, made of hurricane and ether, they
have flown directly out of the brain wearing little blue-gray masks, like strangers' faces, full
of wingéd mania, like television in waiting rooms. Entertainment. Pain. The rage
of fruit trees in April, and your car, which I parked in a shadow before you died, decorated now with feathers,
and unrecognizable
with the windows unrolled
and the headlights on
and the engine still running
in the Parking Space of the Sun.
Source: Poetry (October 2008).
Biography
Poet and novelist Laura Kasischke was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Michigan. Her books of poetry include Wild Brides (1992), Fire and Flower (1998), Dance and Disappear (2002), Gardening in the Dark (2004), Lilies Without (2007), and Space, in Chains (2011), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Kasischke has won numerous awards for her poetry, including the . . .
Poem Categorization
SUBJECT Living, Death, Sorrow & Grieving, Time & Brevity
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