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The one unheated room in hell. The one
unhappy couple in heaven, screaming
obscenities at one another on a
street corner on the loveliest day of
summer:
Once, that was us. Happy anniversary. But
we got older, and the love took over. The
sunken luxury liner of so much.
So long I’ll never forgive you.
So long I want to kill you.
What a joke:
An overcoat thrown out of the window
of a moving car. Wounds
to meat. Like
the Gorgon. A terrific
noise invented her.
Followed by silence.
A blaze of radiation
in a bedroom.
Our mouths left open.
The way
they knocked the coliseum down
on the other side of town
and built a toy museum.
Little Christian.
Little lion.
Little cage.
Little door left open.
Right this way.
Laura Kasischke is Professor of English at the University of Michigan and author of Space, in Chains and The Raising.
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