Champagne by Laura Kasischke

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend April 6, 2015   Champagne   Laura Kasischke

A cold wind, later, but no rain.  A bus breathing heavily at the station.  Beggars at the gate, and the moon like one bright horn of a white cow up there in space. But   really, must I think about all this a second time in this short life?  This crescent moon, like a bit of ancient punctuation. This   pause in the transience of all things.    Up there, Ishtar in the ship of life he’s sailing.  Has   he ripped open again his sack of grain? Spilled it all over the place? Bubbles rising to the surface, breaking.   Beside our sharpened blades, they’ve set down our glasses of champagne. A joke is made.  But, really, must   I hear this joke again?   Must I watch the spluttering light of this specific flame? Must I consider forever the permanent transience of all things:   The bus, breathing at the station. The beggars at the gate. The girl I was. Both pregnant and chaste. The cold wind, that crescent moon. No rain. What difference   can it possibly make, that pain, now that not a single anguished cry of it remains?   Really, must I grieve it all again a second time, and why tonight of all the nights, and just as I’m about to raise, with the blissful others, my   glass to the silvery, liquid chandelier above us?            Copyright © 2015 Laura Kasischke. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “‘Champagne’ recounts not just a single incident in my life when what was supposed to be an ecstatic moment was intruded upon by a bad memory, but hundreds of such incidents. The self in the poem is struggling against the self’s insistence on that psychological habit.” —Laura Kasischke   Laura Kasischke is the author of The Infinitesimals (Copper Canyon Press, 2014). She teaches at the University of Michigan, and lives in Chelsea, Michigan.   Photo credit: Normand/Opale Most Recent Book by Kasischke   The Infinitesimals (Copper Canyon Press, 2014) "No Ticket" by Jonathan Wells "forgetting something" by Nick Flynn "Mnemonic" by Li-Young Lee Read This Poem   For National Poetry Month, we’ve teamed up with 826 National to produce Read This Poem, a celebration of poets in cities with 826 chapters. Read this week's featured poems by poets from Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038